LIBRARY 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


GIFT  OF" 


Class 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 


pip.-    PRESENT 
COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

SIX  PAPERS  READ  BEFORE  THE  NATIONAL 
EDUCATIONAL  ASSOCIATION,  AT  THE  SES- 
SIONS HELD  IN  BOSTON,  JULY  6  AND  7,  1903 

BY 
CHARLES   W.   ELIOT 

PRESIDENT    OF    HARVARD    UNIVERSITY 

ANDREW   F.    WEST 

DEAN  OF  THE  GRADUATE   SCHOOL,   PRINCETON  UNIVERSITY 

WILLIAM   R.    HARPER 

PRESIDENT   OF   THE    UNIVERSITY    OF   CHICAGO 

NICHOLAS  MURRAY  BUTLER 

PRESIDENT   OF    COLUMBIA    UNIVERSITY 


A  R 

'Or   "HE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 

'LIFO_ 

NEW   YORK 

D.   APPLETON   AND   COMPANY 

1903 


8 


COPYRIGHT,  1903,  BY 
D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

PUBLISHERS'  NOTE vii 


I.    A  NEW  DEFINITION  OF  THE  CULTIVATED 

MAN 1 

PRESIDENT  ELIOT,  Harvard  University. 
Read  Monday  evening,  July  6,  1903. 

II.    THE  PRESENT  PERIL  TO  LIBERAL  EDUCA- 
TION     . 27 

.       DEAN  WEST,  Princeton  University. 
Read  Monday  evening,  July  6,  1903. 

III.    THE  LENGTH  OF  THE  COLLEGE  COURSE    .     45 
Q  PRESIDENT  ELIOT,  Harvard  University. 
DEAN  WEST,  Princeton  University. 
PRESIDENT  HARPER,  University  of  Chicago. 
PRESIDENT  BUTLER,  Columbia  University. 
Four  papers  read  Tuesday  morning,  July 
7,  1903. 


PUBLISHERS'   NOTE 

THE  six  papers  printed  in  this  book  were 
received  with  extraordinary  interest  at  the 
time  of  their  delivery  last  July  before  the 
National  Educational  Association  in  Boston, 
and  still  continue  to  be  the  subject  of  wide- 
spread public  comment.  They  form  a  closely 
connected  series  of  short  discussions  by  rep- 
resentative men  of  leading  universities  on 
those  questions  of  college  education  which 
are  now  arousing  the  keenest  discussion  in 
educational  circles  throughout  the  land.  The 
acute  conflict  between  the  rival  ideals  of 
liberal  education,  the  increasing  demands  of 
the  secondary  and  professional  schools,  and 
the  consequent  problem  of  the  survival  of 
the  American  college,  are  the  grave  questions 
involved  in  the  debate.  To  preserve  in 
accessible  form  these  notable  discussions  of 
the  largest  and  most  important  educational 
gathering  ever  held  in  America,  the  six 
papers,  by  permission  of  their  writers,  are 
issued  in  this  volume  for  the  first  time  in 
collected  form  and  in  the  order  in  which 
they  were  delivered. 

NOVEMBER,   1903. 


A  NEW  DEFINITION   OF  THE 
CULTIVATED  MAN 

BY 

CHARLES   W.   ELIOT 

PRESIDENT   OF    HARVARD    UNIVERSITY 


uf;iv---:;3iTY.  j 

or 


A    NEW    DEFINITION    OF    THE 
CULTIVATED   MAN1 

To  produce  the  cultivated  man,  or  at  least 
the  man  capable  of  becoming  cultivated  in 
after  life,  has  long  been  supposed  to  be  one 
of  the  fundamental  objects  of  systematic 
and  thorough  education.*  The  ideal  of  gen- 
eral cultivation  has  been  one  of  the  stand- 
ards in  education.  It  is  often  asked:  Will 
the  education  which  a  given  institution  is 
supplying  produce  the  cultivated  man?  Or, 
can  cultivation  be  the  result  of  a  given 
course  of  study?  In  such  questions  there  is 
an  implication  that  the  education  which  does 
not  produce  the  cultivated  man  is  a  failure, 
or  has  been  misconceived  or  misdirected. 
Now  if  cultivation  were  an  unchanging 
ideal,  the  steady  use  of  the  conception  as 
a  permanent  test  of  educational  processes 
might  be  justified;  but  if  the  cultivated 
man  of  to-day  is,  or  ought  to  be,  a  dis- 

1  Read  before  the  National  Educational  Association  at  its 
Boston  meeting,  general  session,  Monday  evening,  July  6,  1903. 

3 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

tinctly  different  creature  from  the  culti- 
vated man  of  a  century  ago,  the  ideal  of 
cultivation  can  not  be  appealed  to  as  a 
standard  without  preliminary  explanations 
and  interpretations.  It  is  the  object  of  this 
paper  to  show  that  the  idea  of  cultivation 
in  the  highly  trained  human  being  has 
undergone  substantial  changes  during  the 
nineteenth  century. 

'  I  ought  to  say  at  once  that  I  propose  to 
use  the  term  cultivated  man  in  only  its  good 
sense — in  Emerson's  sense.  In  this  paper 
he  is  not  to  be  a  weak,  critical,  fastidious 
creature,  vain  of  a  little  exclusive  informa- 
tion or  of  an  uncommon  knack  in  Latin 
verse  or  mathematical  logic:  he  is  to  be  a 
man  of  quick  perceptions,  broad  sympathies, 
and  wide  affinities,  responsive  but  independ- 
ent, self-reliant  but  deferential,  loving  truth 
and  candor  but  also  moderation  and  pro- 
portion, courageous  but  gentle,  not  finished 
but  perfecting.  All  authorities  agree  that 
true  culture  is  not  exclusive,  sectarian,  or 
partisan,  but  the  very  opposite;  that  it  is 
not  to  be  attained  in  solitude,  but  in  society; 
w  and  that  the  best  atmosphere  for  culture  is 
that  of  a  school,  university,  academy,  or 

4 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

church,  where  many  pursue  together  the 
ideals  of  truth,  righteousness,  and  love. 

Here  some  one  may  think  this  process  of 
cultivation  is  evidently  a  long,  slow,  artifi- 
cial process.  I  prefer  the  genius,  the  man 
of  native  power  or  skill,  the  man  whose 
judgment  is  sound  and  influence  strong, 
though  he  can  not  read  or  write — the  born 
inventor,  orator,  or  poet.  So  do  we  all. 
Men  have  always  reverenced  prodigious  in- 
born gifts,  and  always  will.  Indeed,  bar- 
barous men  always  say  of  the  possessors  of 
such  gifts — these  are  not  men;  they  are 
gods.  i  But  we  teachers,  who  carry  on  a 
system  of  popular  education,  which  is  by 
far  the  most  complex  and  valuable  inven- 
tion of  the  nineteenth  century,  know  that 
we  have  to  do,  not  with  the  highly  gifted 
units,  but  with  the  millions  who  are  more 
or  less  capable  of  being  cultivated  by  the 
long,  patient,  artificial  training  called  edu- 
cation. For  us  and  our  system  the  genius 
is  no  standard,  but  the  cultivated  man  is. 
To  his  stature  we  and  many  of  our  pupils 
may  in  time  attain. 

There  are  two  principal  differences  be- 
tween the  present  ideal  and  that  which  pre- 

5 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

vailed  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  All  thinkers  agree  that  the  hori- 
zon of  the  human  intellect  has  widened 
wonderfully  during  the  past  hundred  years, 
and  that  the  scientific  method  of  inquiry, 
which  was  known  to  but  very  few  when  the 
nineteenth  century  began,  has  been  the 
means  of  that  widening.  This  method  has 
become  indispensable  in  all  fields  of  inquiry, 
including  psychology,  philanthropy,  and  re- 
ligion, and,  therefore,  intimate  acquaintance 
with  it 'has  become  an  indispensable  element 
in  culture.  As  Matthew  Arnold  pointed  out 
more  than  a  generation  ago,  educated  man- 
kind is  governed  by  two  passions — one  the 
passion  for  pure  knowledge,  the  other  the 
passion  for  being  of  service  or  doing  good. 
Now,  the  passion  for  pure  knowledge  is 
only  to  be  gratified  through  the  scientific 
method  of  inquiry.  In  Arnold's  phrases, 
the  first  step  for  every  aspirant  to  culture 
is  to  endeavor  to  see  things  as  they  are,  or 
"  to  learn,  in  short,  the  Will  of  God."  The 
second  step  is  to  make  that  Will  prevail, 
each  in  his  own  sphere  of  action  and  influ- 
ence. This  recognition  of  science  as  pure 
knowledge,  and  of  the  scientific  method  as 

6 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

the  universal  method  of  inquiry,  is  the  great 
addition  made  by  the  nineteenth  century  to 
the  idea  of  culture.  I  need  not  say  that 
within  that  century  what  we  call  science, 
pure  and  applied,  has  transformed  the  world 
as  the  scene  of  the  human  drama;  and  that 
it  is  this  transformation  which  has  com- 
pelled the  recognition  of  natural  science  as 
a  fundamental  necessity  in  liberal  education. 
The  most  convinced  exponents  and  advo- 
cates of  humanism  now  recognize  that  sci- 
ence is  the  "  paramount  force  of  the  modern 
as  distinguished  from  the  antique  and  the 
medieval  spirit "  (John  Addington  Sy- 
monds—  "  Culture  ")  and  that  "an  inter- 
penetration  of  humanism  with  science  and 
of  science  with  humanism  is  the  condition  of 
the  highest  culture." 

A  second  modification  of  the  earlier  idea 
of  cultivation  was  advocated  by  Ralph 
Waldo  Emerson  more  than  two  generations 
ago.  He  taught  that  the  acquisition  of 
some  form  of  manual  skill  and  the  practise 
of  some  form  of  manual  labor  were  essen- 
tial elements  of  culture.  This  idea  has  more 
and  more  become  accepted  in  the  systematic 
education  of  youth;  and  if  we  include  ath- 

7 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

letic  sports  among  the  desirable  forms  of 
manual  skill  and  labor,  we  may  say  that 
during  the  last  thirty  years  this  element  of 
excellence  of  body  in  the  ideal  of  education 
has  had  a  rapid,  even  an  exaggerated,  de- 
velopment. The  idea  of  some  sort  of  bodily 
excellence  was,  to  be  sure,  not  absent  in  the 
old  conception  of  the  cultivated  man.  The 
gentleman  could  ride  well,  dance  gracefully, 
and  fence  with  skill;  but  the  modern  con- 
ception of  bodily  skill  as  an  element  in 
cultivation  is  more  comprehensive,  and  in- 
cludes that  habitual  contact  with  the  exter- 
nal world  which  Emerson  deemed  essential 
to  real  culture.  *  We  have  lately  become 
convinced  that  accurate  work  with  carpen- 
ters' tools,  or  lathe,  or  hammer  and  anvil,  or 
violin,  or  piano,  or  pencil,  or  crayon,  or 
camel's-hair  brush,  trains  well  the  same 
nerves  and  ganglia  with  which  we  do  what 
is  ordinarily  called  thinking.  We  have  also 
become  convinced  that  some  intimate,  sym- 
pathetic acquaintance  with  the  natural  ob- 
jects of  the  earth  and  sky  adds  greatly  to 
the  happiness  of  life,  and  that  this  acquaint- 
ance should  be  begun  in  childhood  and  be 
developed  all  through  adolescence  and  ma- 

8 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

turity.  A  brook,  a  hedgerow,  or  a  garden 
is  an  inexhaustible  teacher  of  wonder,  rev- 
erence, and  love.  The  scientists  insist  to- 
day on  nature-study  for  children;  but  we 
teachers  ought  long  ago  to  have  learned 
from  the  poets  the  value  of  this  element  in 
education.  They  are  the  best  advocates  of 
nature-study.  If  any  here  are  not  convinced 
of  its  worth,  let  them  go  to  Theocritus, 
Virgil,  Wordsworth,  Tennyson,  or  Lowell 
for  the  needed  demonstration.  Let  them 
observe,  too,  that  a  great  need  of  modern 
industrial  society  is  intellectual  pleasures,  or 
pleasures  which,  like  music,  combine  delight- 
ful sensations  with  the  gratifications  of 
observation,  association,  memory,  and  sym- 
pathy. The  idea  of  culture  has  always 
included  a  quick  and  wide  sympathy  with 
men;  it  should  hereafter  include  sympathy 
with  Nature,  and  particularly  with  its  liv- 
ing forms  —  a  sympathy  based  on  some  ac- 
curate observation  of  Nature.  (The  book-  '  \  /L' 
worm,  the-mask,  the  isolated  student,  has  * 


never  been  the  type  of  the  cultivated 
Society  has  seemed  the  natural  setting  for 
the  cultivated  person,  man  or  woman;  but 
the  present  conception  of  real  culture  con- 

2        9 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

tains  not  only  a  large  development  of  this 
social  element,  but  also  an  extension  of  in- 
terest and  reverence  to  the  animate  creation 
and  to  those  immense  forces  that  set  the 
earthly  stage  for  man  and  all  related  beings. 

Let  us  now  proceed  to  examine  some  of 
the  changes  in  the  idea  of  culture,  or  in  the 
available  means  of  culture,  which  the  last 
hundred  years  have  brought  about. 

1.  The  moral  sense  of  the  modern  world 
makes  character  a  more  important  element 
'than  it  used  to  be  in  the  ideal  of  a  cultivated 
man.  Now  character  is  formed,  as  Goethe 
said,  in  the  "  stream  of  the  world  " — not  in 
stillness  or  isolation,  but  in  the  quick-flow- 
ing tides  of  the  busy  world,  the  world  of 
nature  and  the  world  of  mankind.  At  the 
end  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  world  was 
wonderfully  different  from  the  world  at 
the  beginning  of  that  eventful  period;  and, 
moreover,  men's  means  of  making  acquaint- 
ance with  the  world  were  vastly  more  ample 
than  they  were  a  hundred  years  earlier.  To 
the  old  idea  of  culture  some  knowledge  of 
history  was  indispensable.  Now  history  is 
a  representation  of  the  stream  of  the  world, 
or  of  some  little  portion  of  that  stream,  one 

10 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

hundred,  five  hundred,  two  thousand  years 
ago.  Acquaintance  with  some  part  of  the 
present  stream  ought  to  be  more  formative 
of  character,  and  more  instructive  as  regards 
external  nature  and  the  nature  of  man,  than 
any  partial  survey  of  the  stream  that  was 
flowing  centuries  ago.  We  have,  then, 
through  the  present  means  of  reporting 
the  stream  of  the  world  from  day  to  day, 
material  for  culture  such  as  no  preceding 
generation  of  men  has  possessed.  The  cul- 
tivated man  or  woman  must  use  the  means 
which  steam  and  electricity  have  provided 
for  reporting  the  play  of  physical  forces  and 
of  human  volitions  which  make  the  world 
of  to-day;  for  the  world  of  to-day  supplies 
in  its  immense  variety  a  picture  of  all  stages 
of  human  progress,  from  the  Stone  Age, 
through  savagery,  barbarism,  and  medieval- 
ism, to  what  we  now  call  civilization.  The 
rising  generation  should  think  hard  and  feel 
keenly,  just  where  the  men  and  women  who 
constitute  the  actual  human  world  are  think- 
ing and  feeling  most  to-day.  The  pano- 
rama of  to-day's  events  is  not  an  accurate 
or  complete  picture,  for  history  will  supply 
posterity  with  much  evidence  which  is  hid- 
11 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

den  from  the  eyes  of  contemporaries;  but  it 
is  nevertheless  an  invaluable  and  a  new 
means  of  developing  good  judgment,  good 
feeling,  and  the  passion  for  social  service, 
or,  in  other  words,  of  securing  cultivation. 
But  some  one  will  say  the  stream  of  the 
world  is  foul.  True  in  part.  The  stream 
is,  what  it  has  been,  a  mixture  of  foulness 
and  purity,  of  meanness  and  majesty;  but 
it  has  nourished  individual  virtue  and  race 
civilization.  Literature  and  history  are  a 
similar  mixture,  and  yet  are  the  traditional 
means  of  culture.  Are  not  the  Greek  trag- 
edies means  of  culture?  Yet  they  are  full 
of  incest,  murder,  and  human  sacrifices  to 
lustful  and  revengeful  gods. 

2.  A  cultivated  man  should  express  him- 
self by  tongue  or  pen  with  some  accuracy 
and  elegance;  therefore  linguistic  training 
has  had  great  importance  in  the  idea  of 
cultivation.  The  conditions  of  the  educated 
world  have,  however,  changed  so  profoundly 
since  the  revival  of  learning  in  Italy  that 
our  inherited  ideas  concerning  training  in 
language  and  literature  have  required  large 
modifications.  In  the  year  1400  it  might 
have  been  said  with  truth  that  there  was  but 

12 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

one  language  of  scholars,  the  Latin,  and 
but  two  great  literatures,  the  Hebrew  and, 
the  Greek.     Since  that  time,  however,  other 
great  literatures  have   arisen,   the   Italian, 
Spanish,   French,   German,   and   above   all 
the  English,  which  has  become  incompar- 
ably the  most  extensive   and  various  and 
the  noblest  of  literatures.    Under  these  cir- 
cumstances it  is  impossible  to  maintain  that 
a  knowledge  of  any  particular  literature  is 
indispensable  to  culture.     Yet  we  can  not  > 
but  feel  that  the  cultivated  man  ought  to  ' 
possess  a  considerable  acquaintance  with  the 
literature  of  some  great  language,  and  the! 
power  to  use  the  native  language  in  a  pure 
and  interesting  way.    Thus,  we  are  not  sure 
that  Robert  Burns  could  be  properly  de- 
scribed as  a  cultivated  man,  moving  poet 
though  he  was.    We  do  not  think  of  Abra- 
ham Lincoln  as  a  cultivated  man,  master  of 
English  speech  and  writing  though  he  was. 
These  men  do  not  correspond  to  the  type 
represented  by  the  word  cultivated,  but  be- 
long in  the  class  of  geniuses.    When  we  ask 
ourselves   why   a   knowledge   of   literature 
seems  indispensable  to  the  ordinary  idea  of 
cultivation,  we  find  no  answer  except  this: 
13 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

that  in  literature  are  portrayed  all  human 
passions,  desires,  and  aspirations,  and  that 
acquaintance  with  these  human  feelings,  and 
with  the  means  of  portraying  them,  seems  to 
us  essential  to  culture.  These  human  quali- 
ties and  powers  are  also  the  commonest 
ground  of  interesting  human  intercourse, 
and  therefore  literary  knowledge  exalts  the 
quality  and  enhances  the  enjoyment  of  hu- 
man intercourse.  It  is  in  conversation  that 
cultivation  tells  as  much  as  anywhere,  and 
this  rapid  exchange  of  thoughts  is  by  far 
the  commonest  manifestation  of  its  power. 
Combine  the  knowledge  of  literature  with 
knowledge  of  the  "  stream  of  the  world  " 
and  you  have  united  two  large  sources  of 
the  influence  of  the  cultivated  person.  The 
linguistic  and  literary  element  in  cultivation 
therefore  abides,  but  has  become  vastly 
broader  than  formerly — so  broad,  indeed, 
that  selection  among  its  various  fields  is 
forced  upon  every  educated  youth. 

3.  The  next  great  element  in  cultivation 
to  which  I  ask  your  attention  is  acquaint- 
ance with  some  parts  of  the  store  of  knowl- 
edge which  humanity  in  its  progress  from 
barbarism  has  acquired  and  laid  up.  This 
14 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

is  the  prodigious  store  of  recorded,  ration- 
alized, and  systematized  discoveries,  experi- 
ences, and  ideas.  This  is  the  store  which  we 
teachers  try  to  pass  on  to  the  rising  genera- 
tion. The  capacity  to  assimilate  this  store 
and  improve  it  in  each  successive  generation 
is  the  distinction  of  the  human  race  over 
other  animals.  It  is  too  vast  for  any  man 
to  master,  though  he  had  a  hundred  lives 
instead  of  one;  and  its  growth  in  the  nine- 
teenth century  was  greater  than  in  all  the 
thirty  preceding  centuries  put  together.  In 
the  eighteenth  century  a  diligent  student 
with  strong  memory  and  quick  powers  of 
apprehension  need  not  have  despaired  of 
mastering  a  large  fraction  of  this  store  of 
knowledge.  Long  before  the  end  of  the 
nineteenth  century  such  a  task  had  become 
impossible.  Culture,  therefore,  can  no 
longer  imply  a  knowledge  of  everything —  p 
not  even  a  little  knowledge  of  everything. 
It  must  be  content  with  general  knowledge  i 
of  some  things,  and  a  real  mastery  of  some 
small  portion  of  the  human  store.  Here  is 
a  profound  modification  of  the  idea  of  cul- 
tivation, which  the  nineteenth  century  has 
brought  about.  What  portion  or  portions 
15 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

of  the  infinite  human  store  are  most  proper 
to  the  cultivated  man?  The  answer  must 
be,  those  which  enable  him,  with  his  indi- 
vidual personal  qualities,  to  deal  best  and 
sympathize  most  with  Nature  and  with 
other  human  beings.  It  is  here  that  the  pas- 
sion for  service  must  fuse  with  the  passion 
for  knowledge.  It  is  natural  to  imagine 
that  the  young  man  who  has  acquainted 
himself  with  economics,  the  science  of  gov- 
ernment, sociology,  and  the  history  of  civ- 
ilization in  its  motives,  objects,  and  methods 
has  a  better  chance  of  fusing  the  passion  for 
knowledge  with  the  passion  for  doing  good 
than  the  man  whose  passion  for  pure  knowl- 
edge leads  him  to  the  study  of  chemical  or 
physical  phenomena,  or  of  the  habits  and 
climatic  distribution  of  plants  or  animals. 
Yet,  so  intricate  are  the  relations  of  human 
beings  to  the  animate  and  inanimate  creation 
that  it  is  impossible  to  foresee  with  what 
realms  of  nature  intense  human  interests 
may  prove  to  be  identified.  Thus  the  gen- 
eration now  on  the  stage  has  suddenly 
learned  that  some  of  the  most  sensitive  and 
exquisite  human  interests,  such  as  health  or 
disease  and  life  or  death  for  those  we  love, 
16 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

are  bound  up  with  the  life  histories  of  para- 
sites on  the  blood-corpuscles  or  of  certain 
varieties  of  mosquitoes  and  ticks.  When 
the  spectra  of  the  sun,  stars,  and  other  lights 
began  to  be  studied,  there  was  not  the  slight- 
est anticipation  that  a  cure  for  one  of  the 
most  horrible  diseases  to  which  mankind  is 
liable  might  be  found  in  the  X-rays.  While, 
then,  we  can  still  see  that  certain  subjects 
afford  more  obvious  or  frequent  access  to 
means  of  doing  good  and  to  fortunate  inter- 
course with  our  fellows  than  other  subjects, 
we  have  learned  from  nineteenth-century 

experience   that   there  is   no   field   of  real 

knowledge  which  may  not  suddenly  prove 
contributory  in  a  high  degree  to  human  hap- 
piness and  the  progress  of  civilization,  and  ! 
therefore  acceptable  as  a  worthy  element  in 
the  truest  culture, 

4.  The  only  other  element  in  cultivation 
which  time  will  permit  me  to  treat  is  the  A 
training   of   the   constructive   imagination. 
The  imagination  is  the  greatest  of  human  . 
powers,  no  matter  in  what  field  it  works — 
in  art  or  literature,  in  mechanical  invention, 
in  science,  government,  commerce,  or  relig- 
ion; and  the  training  of  the  imagination  is,  j 
17  \} 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

therefore,  far  the  most  important  part  of 
education.  I  use  the  term  constructive  im- 
agination because  that  implies  the  creation 
or  building  of  a  new  thing.  The  sculptor, 
for  example,  imagines  or  conceives  the  per- 
fect form  of  a  child  ten  years  of  age ;  he  has 
never  seen  such  a  thing,  for  a  child  perfect 
in  form  is  never  produced;  he  has  only  seen 
in  different  children  the  elements  of  perfec- 
tion, here  one  element  and  there  another. 
In  his  imagination  he  combines  these  ele- 
ments of  the  perfect  form,  which  he  has 
only  seen  separated,  and  from  this  picture 
in  his  mind  he  carves  the  stone,  and  in  the 
execution  invariably  loses  his  ideal — that  is, 
falls  short  of  it  or  fails  to  express  it.  Sir 
Joshua  Reynolds  points  out  that  the  painter 
can  picture  only  what  he  has  somewhere 
seen;  but  that  the  more  he  has  seen  and 
noted  the  surer  he  is  to  be  original  in  his 
painting,  because  his  imaginary  combina- 
tions will  be  original.  Constructive  imagi- 
nation is  the  great  power  of  the  poet  as  well 
as  of  the  artist;  and  the  nineteenth  century 
has  convinced  us  that  it  is  also  the  great 
power  of  the  man  of  science,  the  investi- 
gator, and  the  natural  philosopher.  What 
18 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

gives  every  great  naturalist  or  physicist  his 
epoch-making  results  is  precisely  the  im- 
aginative power  by  which  he  deduces  from 
the  masses  of  fact  the  guiding  hypothesis 
or  principle. 

The  educated  world  needs  to  recognize  / 
the  new  varieties  of  constructive  imagina-  > 
tion.  Dante  gave  painful  years  to  picturing 
on  many  pages  of  his  immortal  Comedy  of 
Hell,  Purgatory,  and  Paradise  the  most 
horrible  monsters  and  tortures  and  the  most 
loathsome  and  noisome  abominations  that 
his  fervid  imagination  could  concoct  out  of 
his  own  bitter  experiences  and  the  manners 
and  customs  of  his  cruel  times.  Sir  Charles 
Lyell  spent  many  laborious  years  in  search- 
ing for  and  putting  together  the  scattered 
evidences  that  the  geologic  processes  by 
which  the  crust  of  the  earth  has  been  made 
ready  for  the  use  of  man  have  been,  in  the 
main,  not  catastrophic,  but  gradual  and 
gentle,  and  that  the  forces  which  have  been 
in  action  through  past  ages  are,  for  the 
most  part,  similar  to  those  we  may  see  to- 
day eroding  hills,  cutting  canons,  making 
placers,  marshes,  and  meadows,  and  form- 
ing prairies  and  ocean  floors.  He  first 
19 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

imagined,  and  then  demonstrated,  that  the 
geologic  agencies  are  not  explosive  and 
cataclysmal,  but  steady  and  patient.  These 
two  kinds  of  imagination — Dante's  and 
Lyell's — are  not  comparable,  but  both  are 
manifestations  of  great  human  power. 
Zola,  in  La  Bete  Humaine,  contrives  that 
ten  persons,  all  connected  with  the  railroad 
from  Paris  to  Havre,  shall  be  either  mur- 
derers or  murdered,  or  both,  within  eighteen 
months ;  and  he  adds  two  railroad  slaughters 
criminally  procured.  The  conditions  of 
time  and  place  are  ingeniously  imagined, 
and  no  detail  is  omitted  which  can  heighten 
the  effect  of  this  homicidal  fiction.  Con- 
trast this  kind  of  constructive  imagination 
with  the  kind  which  conceived  the  great 
wells  sunk  in  the  solid  rock  below  Niagara 
that  contain  the  turbines  that  drive  the 
dynamos  that  generate  the  electric  force 
that  turns  thousands  of  wheels  and  lights 
thousands  of  lamps  over  hundreds  of  square 
miles  of  adjoining  territory;  or  with  the 
kind  which  conceives  the  sending  of  human 
thoughts  across  three  thousand  miles  of 
stormy  sea  instantaneously  on  nothing  more 
substantial  than  ethereal  waves.  There  is  no 
20 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

crime,  cruelty,  or  lust  about  these  last  two 
sorts  of  imagining.  No  lurid  fire  of  hell  or 
human  passion  illumines  their  scenes.  They 
are  calm,  accurate,  just,  and  responsible, 
and  nothing  but  beneficence  and  increased 
human  well-being  results  from  them.  There 
is  going  to  be  room  in  the  hearts  of  twen- 
tieth-century men  for  a  high  admiration  of 
these  kinds  of  imagination,  as  well  as  for 
that  of  the  poet,  artist,  or  dramatist. 

Another  kind  of  imagination  deserves  a 
moment's  consideration — the  receptive  im- 
agination which  entertains  and  holds  fast 
the  visions  which  genius  creates  or  the 
analogies  of  nature  suggest.  A  young 
woman  is  absorbed  for  hours  in  conning  the 
squalid  scenes  and  situations  through  which 
Thackeray  portrays  the  malign  motives  and 
unclean  soul  of  Becky  Sharp.  Another 
young  woman  watches  for  days  the  pair- 
ing, nesting,  brooding,  and  foraging  of 
two  robins  that  have  established  home  and 
family  in  the  notch  of  a  maple  near  her 
window.  She  notes  the  unselfish  labors  of 
the  father  and  mother  for  each  other  and 
for  their  little  ones,  and  weaves  into  the 
simple  drama  all  sorts  of  protective  instincts 
21 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

and  human  affections.  Here  are  two  em- 
ployments for  the  receptive  imagination. 
Shall  systematic  education  compel  the  first 
but  make  no  room  for  the  second?  The  in- 
creasing attention  to  nature-study  suggests 
the  hope  that  the  imaginative  study  of  hu- 
man ills  and  woes  is  not  to  be  allowed  to 
exclude  the  imaginative  study  of  Nature, 
and  that  both  studies  may  count  toward 
culture. 

It  is  one  lesson  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
then,  that  in  every  field  of  human  knowl- 
edge the  constructive  imagination  finds  play 
— in  literature,  in  history,  in  theology,  in 
anthropology,  and  in  the  whole  field  of 
physical  and  biological  research.  That 
great  century  has  taught  us  that,  on  the 
whole,  the  scientific  imagination  is  quite  as 
productive  for  human  service  as  the  literary 
or  poetic  imagination.  The  imagination  of 
Darwin  or  Pasteur,  for  example,  is  as  high 
and  productive  a  form  of  imagination  as 
that  of  Dante,  or  Goethe,  or  even  Shake- 
speare, if  we  regard  the  human  uses  which 
result  from  the  exercise  of  imaginative  pow- 
ers, and  mean  by  human  uses  not  merely 
meat  and  drink,  clothes  and  shelter,  but  also 

22 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

the  satisfaction  of  mental  and  spiritual', 
needs.  We  must,  therefore,  allow  in  our 
contemplation  of  the  cultivated  man  a  large 
expansion  of  the  fields  in  which  the  culti- 
vated imagination  may  be  exercised.  We 
must  extend  our  training  of  the  imagination 
beyond  literature  and  the  fine  arts,  to  his- 
tory, philosophy,  science,  government,  and 
sociology.  We  must  recognize  the  prodig- 
ious variety  of  fruits  of  the  imagination  that 
the  nineteenth  century  has  given  to  our  race. 
It  results  from  this  brief  survey  that  the 
elements  and  means  of  cultivation  are  much 
more  numerous  than  they  used  to  be;  so 
that  it  is  not  wise  to  say  of  any  one  acquisi- 
tion or  faculty — with  it  cultivation  becomes 
possible,  without  it  impossible.  The  one 
acquisition  or  faculty  may  be  immense,  and 
yet  cultivation  may  not  have  been  attained. 
Thus  it  is  obvious  that  a  man  may  have  a 
wide  acquaintance  with  music,  and  possess 
great  musical  skill  and  that  wonderful  im- 
aginative power  which  conceives  delicious 
melodies  and  harmonies  for  the  delight  of 
mankind  through  centuries,  and  yet  not  be 
a  cultivated  man  in  the  ordinary  accepta- 
tion of  the  words.  We  have  met  artists  who 
23 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

were  rude  and  uncouth,  yet  possessed  a  high 
degree  of  technical  skill  and  strong  powers 
of  imagination.  We  have  seen  philanthro- 
pists and  statesmen  whose  minds  have 
played  on  great  causes  and  great  affairs, 
and  yet  who  lacked  a  correct  use  of  their 
native  language,  and  had  no  historical  per- 
spective or  background  of  historical  knowl- 

/edge. 

/      On  the  other  hand,  is  there  any  single 
/  acquisition  or  faculty  which  is  essential  to 
/   culture,  except  indeed  a  reasonably  accurate 
'    and  refined  use  of  the  mother  tongue? 

Again,  though  we  can  discern  in  different 
individuals  different  elements  of  the  perfect 
type  of  cultivated  man,  we  seldom  find  com- 
bined in  any  human  being  all  the  elements 
of  the  type.  Here,  as  in  painting  or  sculp- 
ture, we  make  up  our  ideal  from  traits 
picked  out  from  many  imperfect  individuals 
and  put  together.  We  must  not,  therefore, 
expect  systematic  education  to  produce  mul- 
titudes of  highly  cultivated  and  symmetric- 
ally developed  persons;  the  multitudinous 
product  will  always  be  imperfect,  just  as 
there  are  no  perfect  trees,  animals,  flowers, 
or  crystals. 

24 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

It  has  been  my  object  to  point  out  that 
our  conception  of  the  type  of  cultivated 
man  has  been  greatly  enlarged,  and  on  the 
whole  exalted,  by  observation  of  the  experi- 
ences of  mankind  during  the  last  hundred 
years.  Let  us  as  teachers  accept  no  single' 
element  or  kind  of  culture  as  the  one  essen- 
tial; let  us  remember  that  the  best  fruits 
of  real  culture  are  an  open  mind,  broad 
sympathies,  and  respect  for  all  the  diverse 
achievements  of  the  human  intellect  at  what- 
ever stage  of  development  they  may  actually 
be — the  stage  of  fresh  discovery,  or  bold 
exploration,  or  complete  conquest.  Let  us 
remember  that  the  moral  elements  of  the 
new  education  are  individual  choice  of  stud- 
ies and  career  among  a  great,  new  variety 
of  studies  and  careers,  early  responsibility 
accompanying  this  freedom  of  choice,  love 
of  truth  now  that  truth  may  be  directly 
sought  through  rational  inquiry,  and  an 
omnipresent  sense  of  social  obligation. 
These  moral  elements  are  so  strong  that  the 
new  .forms  of  culture  are  likely  to  prove 
themselves  quite  as  productive  of  morality, 
high-mindedness,  and  idealism  as  the  old. 


25 


THE  PRESENT  PERIL  TO 
LIBERAL  EDUCATION 

BY 

ANDREW   F.  WEST 

DEAN   OF  THE   GRADUATE   SCHOOL,    PRINCETON   UNIVERSITY 


THE   PRESENT   PERIL   TO 
LIBERAL   EDUCATION1 


LIBERAL  education,  like  political  liberty, 
is  always  worth  preserving  and  always  in 
peril.  In  such  causes,  if  anywhere,  men 
need  to  be  ever  resolute  as  well  as  intelli- 
gent, for  only  thus  does  it  become  possible, 
even  when  distressed,  to  face  grave  crises 
without  becoming  for  an  instant  pessimistic, 
inasmuch  as  the  priceless  value  of  what  we 
are  seeking  to  defend  assures  us  that  our 
efforts  are  well  worth  making  and  that  no 
effort  is  too  great  in  maintaining  so  good 
a  cause. 

We  have  such  a  cause  to-day,  the  cause  of 
liberal  education.  I  need  not  argue  in  this 
presence  that  as  it  prevails  our  American 
life  is  lifted,  and  that  as  it  fails  our  Ameri- 
can life  is  degraded.  It  is  to-day,  as  ever, 
in  peril,  but  in  unusual  peril  as  embodied 

1  Read  before  the  National  Educational  Association  at  its 
Boston  meeting,  general  session,  Monday  evening,  July  6, 
1903. 

29 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

in  its  noblest  representative,  the  American 
.college. 

Let  us  picture  the  situation  in  its  worst 
possible  outcome.  Suppose  the  chances  are 
that  the  college  is  to  fail,  to  be  crushed  out 
between  the  upper  and  nether  millstones  of 
professional  and  secondary  schools  by  rea- 
son of  the  violent  demand  for  something 
more  "  practical."  What  then?  If  it  must 
go,  it  must  go,  of  course.  But  ought  it  to 
go?  And  if  not,  ought  it  to  go  without  a 
struggle?  Those  who  know  most  about  col- 
leges think  not,  while  those  who  know  least 
about  them — and  they  form  a  huge  major- 
ity— are  often  indifferent  and  sometimes 
hostile.  Scarcely  one  in  a  hundred  of  our 
young  men  of  college  age  has  gone  to  col- 
lege. This  little  band  of  alumni,  at  least, 
is  with  the  college,  and  so  is  the  rest  of  the 
better  intelligence  of  the  land.  But  edu- 
cated intelligence  does  not  always  prevail 
over  ignorance,  even  in  deciding  matters  of 
education.  One  can  hardly  fail,  when  paint- 
ing the  danger  at  its  blackest,  to  recall  the 
great  words  of  Stein,  when  appealing  to  his 
fellow  Prussians  in  the  Napoleonic  wars: 
'  We  must  look  the  possibility  of  failure 
30 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

firmly  in  the  face,  and  consider  well  .  .  . 
that  this  contest  is  begun  less  in  regard  to 
the  probability  of  success  than  to  the  cer- 
tainty that  without  it  destruction  is  not  to 
be  avoided." 

It  is  by  no  means  as  black  as  that,  nor 
does  it  seem  likely  to  become  so.  But  even 
if  the  peril  were  far  greater  than  it  is,  there 
would  be  no  good  reason  why  we  should 
not  continue  the  struggle.  There  is  good 
reason  to  believe  the  forces  with  us  are 
strong  enough,  not  only  to  save,  but  to 
strengthen  the  American  college,  and  that 
when  once  its  real  value  is  brought  home 
anew  to  the  minds  and  consciences  of  men, 
it  will  assert  its  rights  with  ample  power. 

Let  us  think  for  a  moment  of  what  the 
American  college  is.  It  has  been  evolved 
out  of  our  own  needs  and  has  proved  its 
extraordinary  usefulness  by  a  long  record. 
It  has  been  democratic  in  its  freedom  of 
access  and  in  the  prevailing  tone  of  its  life. 
It  has  furnished  our  society  and  state  with 
a  small  army  of  well-trained  men.  In  it 
supremely  are  centered  our  best  hopes  for 
liberal  education,  both  as  focused  in  the  col- 
lege itself  and  as  radiating  outward  on  the 
31 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

secondary  schools  below  and  the  professional 
schools  above.  It  is  the  best  available  safe- 
guard against  the  mechanical  cramping  of 
an  unliberalized  technical  education.  It  is 
our  one  available  center  of  organization  for 
true  universities.  It  has  produced  a  class 
of  men  unequaled  in  beneficent  influence  by 
any  other  class  of 'equal  numbers  in  our 
history. 

(  In  the  rush  of  American  life  it  has  stood 
as  the  quiet  and  convincing  teacher  of 
higher  things/  ( It  has  been  preparing  young 
men  for  a  better  career  in  the  world  by 
withdrawing  them  a  while  from  the  world 
to  cultivate  their  jnjnds  and  hearts  byjpn- 
tact  with  things  intellectual  and  spiritual 
in  a  society  devoted  to  those  invisible  things 
on  which  the  abiding  greatness  of  our  life 
depends.  By  reason  of  this  training  most 
college  men  have  become  better  than  they 
would  have  been,  and  better  in  important 
respects  than  they  could  have  been,  had  they 
not  gone  to  college.  Their  vision  has  been 
cleared  and  widened,  and  their  aims  have 
been  elevated.  Not  least  of  all,  they  have 
been  taught  incessantly  the  lesson,  so  deeply 
needed  to  steady  them  in  our  fiercely  prac- 
32 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

tical  surroundings,  that  the  making  of  a 
good  living  is  not  so  important  as  the  mak- 
ing of  a  goodjife/  The  college  has  proved 
its  right  to  live.  To  preserve,  maintain,  and 
energize  it  to  its  highest  capacity  for  good, 
to  prune  its  excesses,  strengthen  its  weak 
places  and  supply  its  needs  is  therefore  the 
bounden  duty  of  those  who  care  for  the  best 
interests  of  our  nation. 

The  perils  which  beset  it  come  from  vari- 
ous sources — first,  from  the  common  defects 
of  our  American  civilization;  second,  from 
the  weaker  tendencies  in  young  men;  and 
third,  from  the  confusion  of  counsels  inside 
the  college  itself.  The  first  two  we  must 
be  prepared  to  encounter  always,  but  the 
last  one  ought  to  be  avoidable. 

This  is  no  place  to  draw  up  a  catalogue 
of  our  common  defects  as  a  people.  Our 
virtues  we  know  well.  They  are  self-reli- 
ance, quick  ingenuity,  adventurousness,  and 
a  buoyant  optimism.  Our  national  faults 
are  not  so  pleasant  to  think  of — as,  for  ex- 
ample, the  faults  of  boastful  vulgarity  and 
reckless  excitability.  Yet  there  are  some 
that  must  be  mentioned  as  being  specially 
perilous  to  our  college  education.  The  chief 
33 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

one,  I  think,  is  commercialism,  the  feverish 
pursuit  of  what  "  pays  "as  the  one  end  of 
life.  Are  we  not  subjected  to-day,  as  never 
before,  to  demands  for  teaching  the  things 
of  commerce  as  part  of  the  college  course? 
And  are  not  the  mechanical  arts  and  crafts, 
admirafrKTinUeed  in  their  true  uses,  trying 
to  mix  in  with  the  other  things  as  though 
they  were  of  the  same  family  of  studies,  and 
saying  they  must  have  room  in  the  same 
house  even  if  other  members  of  the  family 
are  pushed  out.  Are  not  technical  studies 
being  called  liberal,  and  is  not  even  the 
technique  of  the  professions  sometimes  la- 
beled liberal  also,  on  the  plea  that  all  knowl- 
edge is  liberalizing?  So  itjs,  but^in  what 
differing  degrees jtnd  senses!  The  instinct 
for  the  useful  is  being  perverted  and  ex- 
alted above  the  love  of  knowledge  as  a  chief 
end./  And  why?  Because  what  is  wanted 
is  something  immediately,  obviously,  almost 
mercenarily  i^seful.  Is  it  not  time  we  read 
again  the  books  of  philosophy  to  learn  again 
that  the  true  utility  is  the  long  utility  which 
serves  to  make  a  whole  life  useful,  and  that 
it  is  the  end  for  which  men  live  that  makes 
them  useful  or  useless?  Do  we  not  feel  that 
34 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

we  are  here  coming  close  to  the  sanctions  of 
religion  and  need  to  answer  that  deep  ques- 
tion, What  shall  it  profit  a  man?  once  more. 
Another  peril  is  a  companion  and  natural 
follower  of  commercialism,  namely,  illiter- 
acy. Not  in  the  meaning  of  that  word  in 
the  census  tables,  but  in  the  meaning  of 
ignorance  of  good  literature.  "  No  man 
can  serve  books  and  mammon,"  said  Richard 
de  Bury  long  ago.  Is  it  not  a  fact  that  the 
majority  of  college  students  to-day  are  not 
familiar  with  the  commonplaces  of  literary 
information  and  the  standard  books  of  his- 
tory, poetry,  and  so  on.  Do  they  know  that 
greatest  boqkpf  our  tongue,  the  English 
Bible,  as  their  fathers  did?  What  have  so 
many  of  them  been  reading?  The  news- 
papers, of  course,  and  fiction — not  always 
the  better  fiction.  As  between  books  and 
the  short  stories  in  magazines,  how  few  read 
the  former!  I  am  not  now  speaking  of  the 
hard  books  of  philosophy  and  science,  or 
generally  of  the  books  that  involve  severe 
thought,  but  of  the  readable,  delightful 
books,  the  pleasant^classics  of  English. 
What  a  confession  of  the  state  of  things  it 
is  that  colleges  have  to  make  the  reading  of 
~"~  35 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

a  few  books  of  English  literature  a  set  task 
as  an  entrance  requirement,  and  then  ask 
formal  questions  on  what  ought  to  be  the 
free   and  eager  reading  of  every  boy  at 
home.    How  far  it  is  true  that  the  advocacy 
of  teaching  science  may  have  operated,  not 
to  beget  a  taste  for  science,  but  merely  a 
neglect  of  literature,  is  perhaps  idle  to  ask. 
It  is  at  least  true  that  these  neglecters  of 
literature  are  not  usually  giving  laborious 
hours  to  reading  scientific  works.     Perhaps 
some   day   our   schools   generally   will   get 
"  Readers  "  that  have  literature  in  them,  and 
that  will  help  matters  a  little.    But  the  so- 
/    called  students  who  do  not  care  to  read,  or 
I      do  not  know  how  to  read  as  all  students 
I    should,  are  with  us  in  abundance  as  an  ever- 
\  present  peril."   The  quiet  book  by  the  quiet 
\lamp  is  a  good  charmer.     Here  the  true 
student  forms  his  friendships  with  the  mas- 
ters of  thought  and  fancy;  here  they  speak 
to  him  not  under  the  constraints  of  the  class- 
room; here  he  may  relax  without  weakness, 
adventure  without  limit,  soar  without  fear, 
and  hope  without  end.     It  is  the  old  story. 
Books  are,  as  Huxley  put  it,   "  his  main 
helpers,"  and  the  free  reading  outside  the 
36 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

set  tasks  is,  perhaps  next  to  music,  his  most 
ennobling  pleasure.  The  loss  of  this  is  to- 
day the  thing  thatdoes  so  much  to  deprive 
our  college  lif e  and  conversation  of  the  fine 
flavor  of  that  much  misunderstood  thing, 
Culture. 

Another  peril  comes  from  the  students 
themselves.  (  It  is  a  disposition  to  do  the 
pleasant  rather  than  the  hard  thing,  even 
when  the  hard  thing  happens  to  be  the  best 
thing.  1  This  is  most  common  among  those 
whose  main  interest  in  college  life  is  social. 
It  is  also  fostered  by  the  general  absorption 
in  athletics,  though  it  is  not  so  much  the 
athletes  who  are  affected — for  they  are  at 
least  used  to  a  vigorous  discipline  in  things 
physical — as  it  is  the  mass  of  onlookers  who 
attend  the  games  and  waste  so  much  time 
discussing  them.  This  social  and  athletic 
environment,  with  all  its  undeniable  and,  I 
believe,  indispensable  good,  is  just  now  do- 
ing much  harm  to  the  intellectual  life  of 
students.  Because  it  is  unduly  exaggerated 
it  is  operating  powerfully  to  disperse  the 
student's  energies  in  a  miscellany  of  things 
outside  his  studies.  Things  which  should 
come  second,  as  the  relaxation  of  those  whose 
37 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

first  business  is  study,  often  come  first,  and 
studies  must  get  what  they  can  of  what  is 
left.  How  natural  it  is  that  such  students 
should  crowd  into  the  easier  courses.  They 
have  little  interest  left  for  anything  intel- 
lectual. So  far  as  this  occurs,  liberal  edu- 
cation dies  and  college  students  come  to 
their  manhood  with  men's  bodies  and  boys' 
minds.  What  is  being  lost  is  the  develop- 
ment of  virile  intellectual  power,  a  thing 
which  simply  can  not  grow  without  exercise. 
This  is  a  matter  which  goes  far  below  the 
question  of  one  or  another  plan  of  studies, 
though  it  is  greatly  affected  by  the  relative 
wisdom  or  unwisdom  of  what  the  student 
is  offered.  If  he  finds  a  course  which  im- 
pels him  and  his  comrades  to  regular  effort 
day  by  day,  and  also  gives  him  the  immense 
help  that  comes  to  all  young  men  of  ordi- 
nary abilities  from  moving  together  with 
their  fellows  in  the  same  direction,  his  prog- 
ress in  studies  is  part  of  the  orderly  advance 
of  a  march,  with  little  chance  for  straggling 
or  loitering.  If  he  is  confused  by  failure 
to  discover  that  there  is  a  rational  order  of 
studies  or  that  his  college  believes  there  is 
at  least  some  preferable  order  for  the  mass 

38 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

of  students,  he  thus  loses  much  or  all  of  a 
kind  of  help  he  ought  to  have.  If  the  edu- 
cated experience  of  his  college  can  not  tell 
him,  at  least  approximately,  what  things  he 
ought  to  take  and  some  definite  things  which 
all  college  students  ought  to  take,  how  is  he 
to  find  out  with  any  strong  probability  that 
he  is  going  straight  on  the  right  road? 
Those  who  are  so  ready  to  move  an  indefinite 
distance  along  any  of  the  diverging  direc- 
tions of  elective  freedom  may  well  pause  to 
ask  whether  the  keen  words  of  Descartes  on 
progress  in  knowledge  are  not  worth  heed- 
ing in  this  connection:  "  It  is  better  to  go  a 
short  distance  on  the  right  road  than  a  long 
distance  on  the  wrong  one." 

The  love  of  freedom  from  control  and  of 
pleasure  in  our  labor  are  splendid  things. 
They  are  at  once  the  charm  and  peril  of  stu- 
dent effort.  The  true  freedom  of  the  hu- 
man spirit  is  the  true  end  of  the  college 
course.  This  is  not  injured,  however,  by 
creating  places  where  students  may  go,  if 
they  will,  and  where  they  must  take  some 
subjects  of  study  which  experience  shows  to 
be  eminently  fitted  in  their  combination  to 
serve  this  very  end.  We  are  asking  simply 
39 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

for  some  of  the  central  truths  of  history, 
literature,  science,  and  philosophy,  what 
Locke  called  the  "  teeming  truths,  rich  in 
store,  with  which  they  furnish  the  mind,  and 
like  the  lights  of  heaven  are  not  only  beau- 
tiful and  entertaining  in  themselves,  but 
give  light  and  evidence  to  other  things  that 
without  them  could  not  be  seen  or  known."  1 
And  as  for  the  element  of  pleasure,  why 
should  we  not  desire  it?  How  exquisitely 
did  Aristotle  say,  "  Pleasure  perfects  labor, 
even  as  beauty  crowns  youth."  2  Not  the 
idle  pleasure,  however,  but  the  achieved 
pleasure,  the  deep  pleasure  that  comes  from 
noble  mastery,  from  winning  on  the  hard- 
fought  field  of  athletics  of  the  mind,  and, 
above  all,  from  winning  in  the  fight  against 
intellectual  sloth  and  easy-going  indulgence 
— this  is  the  crown  of  our  best  young  college 
manhood. 

A  few  words  must  suffice  to  set  forth  an- 
other peril  which  especially  besets  us  at  this 
time.  It  is  the  peril  of  confusion  in  college 
counsels.  It  has  been  inevitable  because  of 
the  extreme  diversity  of  educational  condi- 

1  Of  the  Conduct  of  the  Human  Understanding,  43. 
8  Ethics,  x,  4,  8. 

40 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

tions  in  our  land  and  because  of  conflicting 
theories  of  college  training. 

The  pole  of  law  and  the  pole  of  freedom 
are  the  two  contrasted  standpoints,  with 
many  a  halting-place  between.  It  is,  of 
course,  clear  that  any  attempt  to  cast  all 
our  colleges  in  one  mold  is  foredoomed  to 
failure.  We  must  seek  some  other  remedy. 
But  if  the  present  confusion  can  not  be 
cured,  the  colleges  will  be  seriously  and  per- 
manently weakened.  Here  at  least  we  must 
do  something,  and  do  it  soon.  The  colleges 
must  at  all  events  do  one  thing,  and  that  is 
to  make  it  as  clear  as  possible  what  it  is  they 
are  severally  seeking  to  accomplish.  Cer- 
tain very  practical  questions  need  to  be 
answered.  They  are  questions  of  the  sub- 
stance and  aim  of  liberal  education. 

One  of  the  questions  is,  Should  a  college 
exact  a  substantial  amount  of  prescribed 
studies  for  its  degree?  If  so,  there  is  room 
to  organize  one  or  more  bachelor's  degrees 
according  to  the  types  now  slowly,  though 
imperfectly,  evolving  in  our  time.  If  not, 
the  free  elective  plan  with  one  bachelor's 
degree  is  the  true  alternative.  There  are 
many  halting-places  between,  but  none  of 
4  41 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

them  is  a  resting-place.  Here,  then,  is  a 
basis  of  clear  division  without  confusion,  and 
one  that  plain  folk  can  understand.  The 
nature  of  the  answer  given  will  depend  on 
whether  or  no  a  given  college  believes  that 
there  are  substantial  studies  above  the  stage 
of  our  preparatory  schooling  which  are 
essential  to  the  best  liberal  education.  In- 
termediate or  minimizing  positions  on  this 
question  will  result  in  corresponding  vague- 
ness and  uncertainty  in  organization,  and 
will  tend  to  perpetuate  the  confusion.  It  is 
worth  sacrificing  something,  even  in  a  tran- 
sitional stage,  for  the  sake  of  the  assured 
gain  that  accrues  to  a  well-defined  plan.  If 
it  turns  out  to  be  a  wrong  plan,  its  defects 
become  visible  sooner  and  may  be  more 
promptly  amended. 

Let  us  ask  a  second  question.  Is  there  or 
is  there  not  a  proper  field  of  college  studies, 
exclusive  of  the  fields  of  secondary,  techni- 
cal, and  professional  learning?  If  so,  such 
studies  alone  should  constitute  the  college 
course.  If  not,  studies  from  the  other  fields 
may  be  brought  in.  It  will  not  do  to  say 
no  sharp  line  can  be  drawn  between  fields  of 
education  for  the  reason  that  the  domain 
42 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

of  knowledge  is  one,  and  all  knowledge  is 
liberalizing.     Follow  this  out  consistently, 
and  important  distinctions,  needed  to  effect 
a  working  scheme  of  division  for  the  parts 
of  education,  are  obscured.     We  may  dis- 
tinguish between  great  regions,  even  though 
we  are  unable  to  settle  all  boundary  disputes. 
/  There  are  enough  college  studies  of  undis- 
/  putedly  and  eminently  liberal  character  to 
I  fill  the   college   course   to   repletion.   /Let 
V  those  who  believe  this  organize  accordingly, 
and  let  those  who  believe  that  any  respect- 
able study  possible  to  students  of  college  age 
may  be  put  in  the  college  course,  put  such 
studies  in.     The  two  kinds  of  colleges  will 
then  be  distinctly  discernible. 

If  the  college  is  to  prevail,  the  confusion, 
though  not  necessarily  a  division  of  coun- 
sels, must  cease.  The  two  opposing  tend- 
encies indicate  the  two  available  lines  for  at 
least  making  the  division  clear  to  the  coun- 
try at  large.  Intermediate  positions  are 
unstable  and  transitional.  They  make  con- 
fusion. I  What  parents,  teachers  and  stu- 
dents need  to  know  as  definitely  as  possible 
is  precisely  what  it  is  a  given  college  stands 
for.  ^  Uncertainty  here  breeds  loss  of  con- 
43 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

fidence  in  liberal  education.  It  is  to  be 
hoped  that  most  of  the  colleges  will  be  able 
to  stand  together.  If  they  do,  I  hope  and 
believe  they  will  stand  for  the  conviction 
that  there  are  college  studies  essential  for  all 
who  take  the  college  course,  that  it  is  the 
completion  of  these  which  opens  to  the  stu- 
dent the  best  all-round  view  of  the  knowl- 
edge most  serviceable  for  his  whole  after 
life,  and  that  the  ideas  of  discipline  and 
duty,  in  studies  as  well  as  in  conduct,  under- 
lie any  real  development  of  the  one  true 
freedom  of  the  human  spirit. 


44 


THE  LENGTH  OF  THE 
COLLEGE  COURSE 

BY 

CHARLES   W.    ELIOT 

PRESIDENT  OF   HARVARD   UNIVERSITY 


THE  LENGTH  OF  THE 
COLLEGE  COURSE1 

THE  period  devoted  to  professional  edu- 
cation has  been  more  than  doubled  within  the 
last  forty  years  in  the  United  States,  except 
in  the  divinity  schools,  where  three  years 
were  early  required  and  are  still  required. 
In  Judge  Story's  law  school  at  Harvard  the 
period  of  residence  was  eighteen  months. 
It  is  now  three  years.  In  1869-70  the  period 
of  required  residence  in  the  Harvard  Med- 
ical School  was  four  months  in  each  of  three 
years.  It  is  now  nine  months  in  each  of 
four  years.  This  tendency  to  increase  the 
period  of  professional  instruction  has  by  no 
means  exhausted  itself;  and,  inasmuch  as 
the  amount  of  professional  knowledge  and 
skill  to  be  acquired  by  every  student  is 
steadily  increasing,  we  must  expect  more 
and  more  time  to  be  devoted  to  professional 

1 A  paper  fead  before  the  Department  of  Higher  Education 
of  the  National  Educational  Association,  at  Boston,  July  7, 
1903. 

47 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

education.  This  tendency  is  by  no  means 
to  be  regretted.  The  advanced  studies  of 
professional  schools  supply  a  better  training 
than  the  elementary  studies  of  school  and 
college;  and  they  are  generally  pursued  by 
the  professional  student  with  greater  zeal 
and  energy  than  either  schoolboys  or  college 
students  manifest;  but,  inasmuch  as  it  is  the 
interest  of  society  and  the  interest  of  the  in- 
dividual that  young  men  should  be  enabled 
to  enter,  well  trained,  on  the  practise  of  a 
profession  by  the  time  they  are  twenty-five 
years  old,  it  follows  that  the  period  of  train- 
ing preliminary  or  preparatory  to  profes- 
sional training  should  come  to  its  end  by  the 
time  the  young  men  are  twenty-one  years 
old. 

If  we  ask,  next,  at  what  age  a  boy  who 
has  had  good  opportunities  may  best  leave 
his  secondary  school — whether  a  high  school 
in  a  city,  or  a  country  academy,  or  an  en- 
dowe<J  or  private  school  for  the  sons  of 
well-to-do  parents — the  most  reasonable  an- 
swer is  at  the  age  of  eighteen.  At  that  age 
the  average  boy  is  ready  for  the  liberty  of  a 
college  or  technical  school,  and  will  develop 
more  rapidly  in  freedom  than  under  the 
48 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

constant  supervision  of  parents  or  school- 
masters. Seventeen  is,  for  the  average  boy, 
rather  young  for  college  freedom,  though 
safe  for  steady  boys  of  exceptional  matu- 
rity. Between  the  secondary  school  and  the 
professional  school,  then,  there  can  be,  as  a 
rule,  only  three  years  for  the  college.  The 
American  colleges  have  been  peculiar  in  ex- 
pecting so  long  a  residence  as  four  years. 
For  the  B.  A.  degree  Oxford  and  Cam- 
bridge have  required  residence  during  only 
three  years,  and  during  much  less  than  one- 
half  of  each  of  those  years.  Even  the  honor 
men  at  Cambridge  are  in  residence,  as  a 
rule,  but  three  years.  Until  recent  years  the 
American  colleges  doubtless  needed  four 
years  because  of  the  inadequacy  of  the 
secondary  schools.  These  schools  having 
steadily  improved,  and  taken  on  themselves 
more  and  more  of  the  preliminary  training 
of  well-educated  youth,  it  is  natural  that  the 
colleges  should  now  be  able  to  relinquish, 
without  lowering  their  own  standards,  a  por- 
tion of  the  time  which  they  have  heretofore 
claimed.  What  portion,  is  an  interesting 
question.  In  the  Latin  countries  the  A.  B. 
is  given  at  the  end  of  the  secondary  school 
49 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

course.  In  Germany  the  college  course  and 
the  degree  of  A.  B.  have  disappeared  alto- 
gether. On  this  point  I  confine  myself  to 
stating  what  answer  the  Harvard  Faculty 
have  given  to  this  question  about  the  relin- 
quishment  of  a  portion  of  the  time  hereto- 
fore devoted  to  the  college.  The  principle 
on  which  the  Harvard  Faculty  have  acted 
is  this:  They  propose,  in  reducing  the  time 
required  for  the  A.  B.  degree  to  three  years, 
to  make  no  reduction  whatever  in  the 
amount  of  work  required  for  that  degree. 
In  other  words,  they  propose  that  the  degree 
of  A.  B.,  taken  in  three  years,  shall  repre- 
sent the  same  amount  of  attainment,  or 
power  acquired,  which  the  A.  B.  taken  in 
four  years  has  heretofore  represented.  Un- 
der the  conditions  which  obtain  at  Harvard 
there  is  no  difficulty  whatever  in  bringing 
about  this  result.  In  the  first  place  the  Fac- 
ulty have  already  pushed  back  into  the  sec- 
ondary schools  a  good  deal  of  work  of 
proper  school  grade  which  used  to  be  done 
in  the  college.  Secondly,  the  Faculty  re- 
quire the  young  man  who  takes  his  degree 
in  three  years  to  pass  exactly  the  same  num- 
ber of  examinations  on  the  same  number  of 
50 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

courses  as  are  required  of  the  man  who  takes 
the  degree  in  four  years.  This  demand  can 
be  readily  met  by  the  student,  because  the 
long  summer  vacations  can  be  utilized,  and 
the  ordinary  pace  or  rate  of  work  of  the 
student  in  the  four-years'  course  can  be  con- 
siderably accelerated  by  the  ambitious  man 
who  proposes  to  take  his  degree  in  three 
years.  There  are  three  months  and  two- 
thirds  of  vacation  at  Harvard  in  every  aca- 
demic year — a  superfluous  amount.  The 
standard  of  work  in  the  four-years'  course 
for  the  Harvard  A.  B.  was  decidedly  lower 
than  the  standard  of  work  in  any  of  the 
Harvard  professional  schools.  It  is  one  of 
the  advantages  of  the  three-year  plan  that 
it  raises  this  standard  of  work  during  the 
college  residence.  Pursuing  this  general 
policy  that  the  requirements  for  the  A.  B. 
are  not  to  be  diminished,  the  Harvard  Fac- 
ulty fixes  the  minimum  regular  residence 
for  the  Harvard  A.  B.  at  three  years.  They 
do  not  believe  that  the  residence  can  be  re- 
duced to  two  years  without  diminishing  the 
amount  of  work  required  for  the  degree. 
At  several  different  times  it  was  proposed 
in  the  Harvard  Faculty  that  they  adopt  the 
51 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

principle  of  counting  the  first  year  spent  in 
one  of  the  professional  schools  toward  the 
degree  of  A.  B.,  as  well  as  toward  the  de- 
gree of  the  professional  school;  but  the 
Faculty  always  rejected  that  proposal,  on 
the  ground  that  this  method  implied  a  re- 
duction of  one-quarter  in  the  requirements 
for  the  degree  of  A.  B.,  and  indeed  of  more 
than  one-quarter,  because  the  senior  year 
ought  to  be  a  better  year  than  the  freshman 
year.  To  accentuate  this  determination  not 
to  abate  the  requirements  for  the  degree  of 
A.  B.,  while  shortening  the  period  of  resi- 
dence, the  Faculty  for  some  years  required 
persons  who  were  to  take  the  degree  in  three 
years  to  obtain  higher  marks  or  grades  than 
were  required  of  persons  who  took  the  de- 
gree in  four  years.  This  particular  require- 
ment has  now  been  removed;  but  it  was 
useful  during  the  years  of  transition,  be- 
cause it  made  it  evident  that  the  three-years' 
man,  on  the  average,  had  made  greater 
attainments  than  the  average  four-years' 
man.  The  governing  boards  of  the  Univer- 
sity have  had  precisely  the  same  intentions 
as  the  Faculty;  so  that  insistence  on  the 
previous  sum  of  the  attainments  for  the  de- 
52 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

gree  is  the  characteristic  feature  of  the  evo- 
lution at  Harvard.  The  result  has  been 
brought  about  by  the  use  of  the  Harvard 
admission  examinations  to  raise  the  stand- 
ards of  the  secondary  schools,  by  the  utiliza- 
tion of  parts  of  the  long  summer  vacation, 
and  by  encouraging  students  to  put  more 
work  into  the  day  and  into  the  year  while 
they  are  in  residence  for  the  A.  B. 

The  Harvard  Faculty  have  endeavored 
to  hold  fast  to  the  actual  facts  of  the  case. 
They  say  nothing  about  an  A.  B.  in  five 
years,  because  none  but  men  in  some  way 
disabled  spend  five  years  in  getting  a  bache- 
lor's degree.  They  do  not  try  to  bring  boys 
to  college  in  large  number  at  sixteen  or 
seventeen  years  of  age;  but  they  have  for 
years  advised  that  they  come  at  eighteen 
instead  of  nineteen.  They  offer  the  bache- 
lor's degree  in  three  years  or  three  and  a 
half  years,  instead  of  four  years,  because 
many  students  can  win  the  degree  in  these 
shorter  periods  of  residence  without  any 
lowering  of  the  standard.  In  short,  they 
propose  to  hold  everything  they  have  won 
for  the  college  and  the  degree  of  Bachelor 
of  Arts,  and  to  meet  the  claims  of  pro- 
53 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

fessional  education  by  better  organization 
of  the  whole  course  of  education  from  be- 
ginning to  end,  by  better  methods  of  teach- 
ing, and  by  large  and  early  freedom  of 
choice  among  different  studies. 

While  this  change  was  going  on  in  Har- 
vard College,  the  University  took  the  im- 
portant step  of  requiring  the  A.  B.  for 
admission  to  its  three  oldest  professional 
schools,  first  in  the  Divinity  School,  then  in 
the  Law  School,  and  lastly  in  the  Medical 
School.  It  had  already  established  the 
Graduate  School  in  Arts  and  Sciences,  for 
admission  to  which  a  preliminary  degree 
was,  of  course,  required.  It  is  unnecessary 
to  point  out  that  this  action  gives  the  strong- 
est possible  support  to  the  A.  B.  If  taken 
by  the  leading  universities  of  the  country  at 
large,  it  would  settle  at  once  in  the  affirma- 
tive the  question  of  the  continued  existence 
of  the  American  college.  To  preserve  the 
college  the  sure  way  is  to  keep  down  the 
age  for  leaving  the  secondary  school,  ab- 
breviate the  college  course  to  three  years, 
and  require  the  A.  B.  for  admission  to  uni- 
versity professional  schools.  Then  we  may 
avoid  what  has  happened  in  all  the  nations 
54 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

of  Continental  Europe,  namely,  the  disap- 
pearance of  the  college  course  for  the  A.  B. 

The  requirement  of  the  degree  of  Bach- 
elor of  Arts  for  admission  to  the  profes- 
sional schools  has  the  happiest  effect  on  the 
whole  course  of  professional  study.  The 
classes  in  the  professional  schools  become  at 
once  more  homogeneous  in  quality,  and  that 
quality  is  distinctly  higher  than  before.  To 
believe  that  any  other  result  were  possible 
would  be  to  discredit  the  college  course 
itself. 

The  objections  to  this  very  decided  im- 
provement are  two.  It  is  alleged,  in  the  first 
place,  that  the  professional  schools  of  the 
universities  can  not  bear  the  reduction  in 
their  number  of  students  which  would  fol- 
low the  enforcement  of  this  requirement. 
Doubtless  there  would  be  some  temporary 
diminution  in  the  number  of  students;  but 
the  experience  at  Harvard  shows  that  this 
reduction  would  be  only  temporary.  The 
reduction  is  lessened  if  four  or  five  years' 
notice  of  the  change  is  given.  After  a  few 
years  the  reduction  would  be  overcome.  In- 
deed, in  the  Harvard  Law  School  the  num- 
ber of  students  rapidly  increased  after  the 
55 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

requirement  of  a  degree  for  admission  to  the 
school.  As  a  rule,  the  men  already  engaged 
in  the  practise  of  a  profession  approve  and 
actively  support  all  measures  which  tend  to 
raise  the  standard  of  education  for  their  pro- 
fession. This  pecuniary  argument,  there- 
fore, may  safely  be  regarded  as  one  of  only 
temporary  and  limited  force.  The  other 
objection  is  a  sentimental  one.  It  is  said 
that  the  requirement  of  a  degree  for  admis- 
sion to  all  professional  schools  would  ex- 
clude some  young  men  of  remarkable  pow- 
ers who  have  had  no  opportunities  in  their 
earlier  years  to  obtain  a  good,  systematic 
education.  The  obvious  answer  to  this  ob- 
jection is  that  the  organized  institutions  of 
education  are  not  planned  for  geniuses,  and 
that  geniuses  do  not  need  them.  Moreover, 
it  is  not  supposed  that  all  the  professional 
schools  of  the  country  would  make  this 
requirement.  There  would  doubtless  be 
plenty  of  private-venture  schools  in  all  the 
large  cities  which  would  receive  young  men 
of  an  appropriate  age  without  the  slightest 
inquiry  into  their  preliminary  education. 
That  is  the  case  to-day,  and  the  proposed 
change  in  university  policy  would,  of  course, 
56 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

be  an  advantage  to  such  schools.  The 
question  before  us,  in  this  Department  of 
Higher  Education,  is  what  the  universities 
ought  to  do.  I  urge  that  the  universities 
should  maintain  each  its  present  standard 
for  the  degree  of  Bachelor  of  Arts,  but 
should  permit  young  men  who  are  capable 
.of  reaching  that  standard  in  three  years  of 
residence  to  take  the  degree  in  three  years; 
and,  secondly,  that,  with  notice  of  not  less 
than  four  years,  they  should  require  some 
bachelor's  degree  in  arts  or  sciences  for  ad- 
mission to  their  professional  schools.  The 
long  notice  will  enable  parents,  schools,  and 
the  whole  community  to  adapt  themselves  to 
the  change.  The  greater  the  number  of 
universities  which  unite  in  this  movement, 
the  more  easily  will  it  be  brought  about. 

It  will  be  observed,  perhaps,  that  I  have 
said  nothing  about  the  degree  of  Bachelor 
of  Science  or  Bachelor  of  Philosophy.  My 
reason  is  that  I  regard  those  degrees  as  only 
temporary  and  inferior  substitutes  for  the 
traditional  degree  of  Bachelor  of  Arts.  I 
believe  that  these  lesser  degrees  will  dis- 
appear as  soon  as  an  adequate  variety  of 
studies  is  allowed  to  count  toward  the  de- 
5  57 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

gree  of  Bachelor  of  Arts.  Toward  this  ad- 
mirable consummation  the  Harvard  Faculty 
have  already  taken  some  important  steps. 
Thus,  many  college  studies  can  be  counted 
toward  the  degree  of  Bachelor  of  Science; 
and  many  of  the  studies  originally  intro- 
duced into  the  University  through  the  Sci- 
entific School  may  be  counted  toward  the 
degree  of  Bachelor  of  Arts.  Again,  in  1903 
and  thereafter,  the  requirements  for  admis- 
sion to  the  Scientific  School  represent  as 
large  an  amount  of  work  done  at  the  sec- 
ondary school  as  the  requirements  for  ad- 
mission to  Harvard  College,  although  the 
number  of  options  is  larger  in  the  Scientific 
School  requirements.  A  very  moderate  in- 
crease in  the  number  of  required  studies  for 
admission  to  the  Scientific  School,  and  in 
the  number  of  optional  studies  allowed  for 
admission  to  Harvard  College,  would  make 
the  requirements  for  admission  to  the  two 
departments  identical.  For  a  time,  in  the 
development  of  the  American  universities, 
there  was  a  strong  tendency  to  multiply 
bachelor  degrees.  For  ten  years  past  the 
tendency  has  been  all  the  other  way.  Until 
this  simplification  is  brought  about,  how- 
58 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

ever,  the  requirement  for  admission  to  the 
university  professional  schools  will  have  to 
be  a  bachelor's  degree  in  arts  or  sciences, 
this  description  including  the  miscellaneous 
degrees  in  letters,  philosophy,  engineering, 
etc. 

Finally,  if  a  degree  in  arts  or  sciences  is 
to  be  required  for  admission  to  university 
professional  schools,  the  road  to  such  a  de- 
gree should  be  as  smooth  and  broad  as  pos- 
sible. No  exclusive  prescriptions  should 
obstruct  it;  and  the  various  needs  of  the 
individual  pupil  should  be  carefully  pro- 
vided for  in  both  school  and  college. 


59 


THE  LENGTH  OF  THE 
COLLEGE  COURSE 

BY 

ANDREW   R  WEST 

DEAN  OF   THE   GRADUATE   SCHOOL,    PRINCETON   UNIVERSITY 


THE  LENGTH  OF  THE 
COLLEGE  COURSE1 

THE  American  college  is  the  vital  center 
of  our  system  of  higher  education.  With 
all  its  imperfections,  it  serves,  as  probably 
no  other  institution  can  serve,  to  uphold  the 
standards  of  the  secondary  schools  and  to 
lift  from  below  the  level  of  professional 
schools.  It  occupies  an  intermediate  field  of 
its  own,  not  perfectly  defined,  but  as  clearly 
defined  as  the  fields  of  our  secondary  or  pro- 
fessional education.  It  should  be  allowed 
and  encouraged,  as  they  are,  to  organize 
itself  completely  and  efficiently  according 
to  the  laws  of  its  own  life,  without  curtail- 
ment or  encroachment.  Otherwise  we  shall 
be  in  the  absurd  and  uncivilized  position  of 
refusing  to  try  for  the  best  college  educa- 
tion, and  shall  be  sacrificing  to  commercial 
and  utilitarian  demands  the  one  educational 

1  Read  before  the  National  Educational  Association  (Depart- 
ment of  Higher  Education)  at  Boston,  July  7,  1903. 

63 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

agency  most  needed  to  purify  and  elevate 
the  too  materialistic  tone  of  our  American 
life. 

By  tradition  the  length  of  the  college 
course  is  four  years.  This  is  almost  uni- 
versal. There  seems  to  be  no  good  reason 
a  priori  why  it  should  have  been  four,  rather 
than  five  or  three,  or  even  two.  But  the 
practical  unanimity  of  the  tradition  indi- 
cates that  thus  far,  at  least,  the  period  of 
four  years  has  been  found  to  be  well  suited 
to  our  needs.  Analyze  this  as  we  may,  it  is 
a  definite  result  of  long  and  wide  experience 
and  one  which  should  not  be  discarded  with- 
out the  fullest  consideration. 

It  is  argued,  however,  that  conditions  are 
changing  and  that  a  shorter  time  must  be 
allotted  if  we  would  save  the  American  col- 
lege. This  argument  rests  mainly  on  the 
increasing  age  of  the  student  at  entrance  to 
college  and  the  lengthening  courses  of  the 
professional  schools.  The  fact  that  college 
graduates  are  kept  back  from  entering  busi- 
ness life  until  they  are  twenty-two  need  not 
disturb  us  on  economic  grounds,  because  it 
is  also  a  fact  that  the  marked  increase  of 
college  graduates  in  business  life  has  coin- 
64 


Y    ; 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

cided  with  the  very  period  in  which  the  age 
of  graduation  has  been  rising.  But  for 
those  going  into  professional  life  the  case 
is  different.  Taking  eighteen  as  the  aver- 
age age  of  entrance  to  college,  adding  four 
years  of  college  and  three  or,  as  it  may  soon 
be,  four  years  of  professional  study,  the 
young  doctor  or  lawyer  is  not  fledged  until 
he  is  twenty-six.  A  year,  or  even  two  years, 
may  be  saved  by  reducing  the  length  of  the 
college  course. 

Let  us  admit,  at  once,  that  we  are  facing 
a  serious  economic  question.  The  saving  of 
a  year  or  two  in  time  and  money  will  in 
many  cases  settle  the  question  as  to  how  ex- 
tended an  education  a  young  man  can  get. 
Young  men  who  must  get  to  law  or  medi- 
cine by  twenty-four  must  forego  something 
if  they  enter  college  at  eighteen.  No  de- 
vice will  secure  them  eight  years  of  educated 
life  in  six.  The  brighter  and  more  mature 
among  them  may  perhaps  save  a  year  by 
entering  college  at  seventeen.  But  this  does 
not  meet  the  general  difficulty.  If  by  any 
chance  they  enter  at  sixteen,  they  will  be 
found  as  a  rule  too  immature  mentally  for 
the  studies  and  too  immature  morally  for 
65 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

the  life  of  our  larger  modern  colleges.  This 
solution  may  therefore  be  dismissed  as  in- 
sufficient and  unwise.  If  the  year  or  two 
years  is  to  be  saved,  it  must  be  taken  in  most 
instances  from  the  college  or  from  the  pro- 
fessional school. 

We  may  as  well  admit  that  in  such  cases 
the  college  must  suffer  the  loss,  because  the 
intending  doctor  or  lawyer  can  not  escape 
the  demands  of  the  professional  schools. 
His  livelihood  is  conditioned  on  completing 
his  professional  education,  and  this  settles 
the  matter. 

But  does  it  settle  the  general  question  of 
the  proper  length  of  the  college  course  for 
those  who  have  time  to  take  it?  What  are 
we  to  do  with  the  mass  of  students  who  can 
take  four  years  of  college?  Why  must 
their  course  be  shortened?  It  is  a  minority 
which  goes  on  to  law  and  medicine.  Some 
better  reason  must  be  found  than  the  fact 
that  a  part  of  this  minority  can  not  remain 
four  years.  If  it  were  true,  or  if  it  becomes 
true,  that  the  majority  of  young  men  suit- 
able for  college  can  not  stay  throughout 
the  present  course,  then  it  may  be  a  shorter 
course  must  be  established.  Otherwise  it 
66 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

does  not  appear  that  we  are  doing  a  wrong 
to  students  by  holding  them  four  years, 
unless  it  can  also  be  shown  that  a  three-year 
or  a  two-year  course  is  intrinsically  better 
than  a  four-year  course  for  American  young 
men. 

This  is  to  me  the  one  question  of  real 
difficulty.  I  am  unable  to  see  that  young 
men  generally  will  be  better  trained  to 
begin  as  lawyers  at  twenty-four  than  at 
twenty-five  or  twenty-six.  I  am  able  to  see 
that  many  can  not  afford  to  wait  so  long, 
and  must  take  what  they  can  get  in  the 
shorter  time.  It  is  clear  that  some  of  them 
can  not  take  four  years  in  college.  It  is 
also  clear  that  giving  them  the  bachelor's 
degree  at  the  end  of  two  years  or  three  years 
will  not  give  them  an  education  of  four 
years.  It  is  the  time  taken,  as  well  as  the 
studies  taken,  that  counts  heavily  if  a  per- 
manent impression  is  to  be  made.  Extended 
time  in  residence  given  to  unhurried  study, 
and  not  rapidly  formed  acquaintance  with 
a  series  of  studies,  is  what  is  needed.  And 
when  we  realize  with  what  imperfect  train- 
ing so  many  boys  come  from  the  schools,  it 
may  easily  take  four  years  to  outflank  their 
67 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

deficiencies,  correct  their  methods,  and  de- 
velop even  a  semblance  of  liberal  culture. 

Why,  then,  if  some  of  them  must  leave 
college,  should  they  not  leave,  as  some  now 
do,  at  the  end  of  two  years  or  three  years, 
taking  with  them  their  valuable  half -loaf  or 
three-quarters  loaf  of  college  life  and  train- 
ing? It  is  worth  a  great  deal  to  them. 
They  will  find  most  of  the  professional 
schools  ready  to  receive  them,  and  some  of 
them  ready  to  give,  if  not  the  very  best,  at 
least  a  good  professional  education.  The 
best  of  everything  in  education  can  not  be 
had  without  taking  the  best  time  needed. 
In  fact  we  are  exaggerating  the  situation, 
for  if  all  professional  schools  would  merely 
go  so  far  as  to  exact  at  least  two  years  of 
college  as  prerequisite  to  entrance,  there 
would  be  a  gain  the  country  over  in  the 
quality  of  professional  students.  It  may, 
perhaps,  be  thought  that  the  three-year 
course  will  bring  more  students  to  college 
and  more  college  graduates  to  professional 
schools.  This  is  a  matter  of  pure  specula- 
tion. But  suppose  it  does.  Is  it  clear  that 
we  need  more  college  students  with  shorter 
education  than  they  have  now?  Is  it  clear 
68 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

that  we  need  proportionally  more  doctors 
and  lawyers?  The  desired  gain  in  quality 
of  professional  students  can  be  secured 
without  destroying  the  four-year  course, 
merely  by  exacting  generally  three  years 
of  college  as  a  minimum  entrance  require- 
ment. Has  any  American  university  gone 
farther  than  this  in  dealing  with  the  stu- 
dents of  its  own  college  who  enter  its  own 
law  or  medical  school? 

In  the  present  condition  of  affairs  in  our 
land,  viewed  in  its  entirety,  the  question  of 
entrance  to  professional  schools  and  the 
question  of  the  proper  length  of  the  college 
course  are  two  distinct  questions.  By  all 
means  let  there  be  a  few  leaders  among  the 
professional  schools  exacting  a  college  de- 
gree for  admission,  especially  if  it  be  pos- 
sible to  secure  this  on  the  basis  of  a  full 
college  course  completed  in  the  full  time 
without  haste  or  crowding.  The  time  may 
perhaps  come  when  all  good  schools  will  be 
able  to  follow  their  example.  But  it  has  not 
come  yet. 

If,  therefore,  the  college  course  is  to  be 
shortened,  it  should  be  because  the  shorter 
course  is  intrinsically  better  for  the  mass  of 
69 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

college  students.  Is  four  years  of  Ameri- 
can college  education  better  than  three? 
Few  will  doubt  it  is  better  than  two.  Three 
years  or  four  is  the  real  question. 

That  a  change  of  profound  importance 
has  come  over  our  colleges  in  the  last  thirty 
years  none  will  deny.  It  is  a  change  in 
tone  and  spirit.  The  gains  in  diversified 
opportunity  and  in  student  self-government 
have  been  immense.  There  have  also  been 
losses.  In  the  large  older  colleges  particu- 
larly there  has  been  an  accession  of  students 
who  are  attracted  more  by  the  social  and 
athletic  life  than  by  studies.  There  has 
been  a  relaxing  of  effort,  a  disposition  to 
look  on  college  life  as  a  pleasant  social 
episode.  The  old-fashioned  college  with  its 
simple  programme  of  prescribed  studies  is 
gone.  The  so-called  "  elective  system  "  has 
come  in  to  replace  it,  wholly  or  partly.  To 
rehabilitate  the  old  state  of  things  is  im- 
possible and  undesirable.  To  endure  the 
disintegration  and  confusion  in  intellectual 
standards  which  has  ensued  is  also  unde- 
sirable and,  I  believe,  impossible.  The 
strength  of  opinion  favorable  to  the  four- 
year  course  is  found  to  be  greatest  where  a 
70 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

large  basis  of  prescribed  studies  has  been 
kept.  The  arguments  for  a  shorter  course 
are  most  influential  where  elective  freedom 
prevails  most.  It  is  possible  to  argue  with 
much  effect  for  four  years  when  it  can  be 
shown  that  a  fine  education  is  given  be- 
cause of  the  very  definite  correlation  of 
studies  to  one  end — namely,  the  acquaint- 
ing of  young  men  not  only  with  the  meth- 
ods of  knowledge,  but  with  the  substance 
of  things  important  for  all  liberally  edu- 
cated men  to  know,  the  elemental  things 
which,  taken  together,  represent  the  stock 
and  staple  of  our  intellectual  inheritance  as 
a  race.  This  takes  considerable  time.  Sup- 
plement this  with  a  first  exploration  into  the 
fields,  or,  far  better,  into  some  definitely 
mapped  field  of  elective  freedom  corre- 
sponding to  the  well-ascertained  aptitudes 
rather  than  the  chance  likings  of  the  stu- 
dent, and  four  years  will  be  found  none  too 
much.  A  natural  break  between  the  two 
lower  and  two  upper  years  may  thus  easily 
be  made.  At  this  time,  if  the  hard  neces- 
sity arises  so  soon,  let  men  leave  who  must 
leave  early.  The  bachelor's  degree  may 
then  be  kept  for  those  who  do  the  full  work 
71 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

in  the  normal  time.  From  this  point  of 
view  the  four-year  course  is  in  every  way 
worth  maintaining. 

But  if  the  principle  is  to  prevail  that, 
once  in  college,  the  student  is  to  find  all 
studies  elective,  the  case  is  very  different. 
No  definite  programme  is  completed  for  the 
mass  of  students  so  far  as  concerns  the  spe- 
cific substance  of  what  they  study.  And 
without  this  an  important  common  element 
is  subtracted.  A  certain  effect  is  lost.  The 
common  area  of  liberal  culture,  in  which  all 
educated  men  should  be  at  home,  tends  to 
shrink  and  vanish.  The  solidarity  of  the 
student  community,  the  intense  esprit  de 
corps  which  accompanies  movement  by  col- 
lege classes,  the  intimacy  of  the  community 
in  things  of  common  intellectual  acquaint- 
ance— all  these  are  weakened  by  dispersion. 
The  students  are  not  traveling  near  enough 
in  the  same  direction  to  be  within  easy  hail 
and  call.  Such  a  condition  is  anomalous 
in  education.  Secondary  education  below 
gains  its  effect  from  the  correlation  of  pre- 
scribed studies,  so  as  to  form  a  general 
gymnastic  of  the  mind.  Professional  edu- 
cation above  is  unattainable  without  the 
72 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

mastery  of  correlated  subjects  prescribed 
for  all.  The  inner  relations  of  the  subjects 
studied,  and  not  the  preferences  of  imma- 
ture minds,  form  the  basis  for  an  organized 
course  of  study,  and  should  have  much  to 
do,  perhaps  most  to  do,  with  determining 
the  length  of  any  course.  College  educa- 
tion alone,  under  the  plan  of  free  election, 
is  being  allowed  to  wander  aimlessly,  as 
though  there  were  no  general  and  necessary 
rational  relations  according  to  which  college 
studies  should  be  combined  as  they  are  in 
other  fields  of  education.  The  student's 
preference,  so  often  determined  by  inade- 
quate knowledge  or  an  easy-going  follow- 
ing of  the  line  of  least  resistance,  is  digni- 
fied by  the  name  of  "  election,"  and  the 
bewildering  mass  of  elective  studies  offered 
him  is  seriously  called  a  "  system."  "  Sys- 
tem "  it  may  be  to  others,  but  not  to  him. 

How  can  a  definite  argument  for  a  dis- 
cipline and  culture  of  four  years,  rather 
than  of  three  years,  be  erected  on  such  a 
basis?  We  need  not  waste  time  in  exploring 
the  tangle  of  inner  reasons  which  indicate 
that  the  indefiniteness  and  heterogeneity  of 
a  free  elective  course  may  be  a  proper,  even 
6  73  ' 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

an  urgent,  reason  for  shortening  it.  The 
mere  fact  that  the  movement  for  a  three- 
year  course  is  strongest  where  elective  free- 
dom is  least  restricted  is  enough  indication 
that  a  powerful  cause  operating  inside  the 
college  course  to  shorten  it  is  the  inability 
of  a  purely  elective  scheme  to  fill  out  four 
years  with  profit  to  the  mass  of  students. 

If  the  proposal  were  made  to  change  a 
four-year  course  in  elective  studies  to  a 
three-year  course  with  a  large  basis  of  pre- 
scribed studies,  I  confess  the  three-year 
course  would  seem  to  me  a  marked  improve- 
ment. And  unless  something  is  done  to 
reduce  the  tangle  to  order,  the  three-year 
course  seems  to  be  inevitable  in  some  places. 
But  if  the  proposal  be  to  reduce  the  other 
type  of  four-year  course  to  three  years,  then 
the  loss  is  not  only  unnecessary,  but  is  in 
every  way  undesirable,  because  it  means  the 
loss  of  the  crowning  year  in  a  definitely 
rounded  plan,  the  consummate  college  year 
of  intellectual  development,  privilege  and 
satisfaction. 

On  the  colleges,  therefore,  which  believe 
in  maintaining  a  large  basis  of  prescribed 
studies  as  the  one  sure  foundation  for  a 
74 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

rational  plan  of  subsequent  elective  studies 
will  rest  the  duty  of  maintaining  a  four- 
year  course.  They  will  need  to  make  sure 
that  they  work  out  their  programme  in  true 
accordance  with  their  academic  confession 
of  faith  and  secure  to  their  students  at  all 
hazards  the  few  fundamental  studies,  well 
and  amply  taught.  They  will  need  to  be 
resolute  in  teaching  young  men  that  there 
is  no  real  education  without  well-directed 
effort;  that  it  is  not  doing  what  a  man  likes 
or  dislikes  to  do,  but  the  constant  exercise 
in  doing  what  he  ought  to  do  in  matters  of 
intellect  as  well  as  of  conduct,  whether  he 
happens  to  like  it  or  not,  that  turns  the 
frank,  careless,  immature,  lovable  school- 
boy into  the  strong,  well-trained  man  capa- 
ble of  directing  wisely  himself  and  others. 
If  they  fail  to  do  this  with  measurable  suc- 
cess, they  fail  to  justify  their  contention. 
If  they  succeed,  the  American  college  course 
of  traditional  length  and  largely  prescribed 
content  may  be  trusted  to  justify  itself 
triumphantly. 


75 


THE  LENGTH  OF  THE 
COLLEGE  COURSE 

BY 

WILLIAM    R.    HARPER 

PRESIDENT  OF   THE   UNIVERSITY   OF  CHICAGO 


THE  LENGTH  OF  THE 
COLLEGE  COURSE1 

IN  view  of  the  time  allotted,  I  limit  my 
statement  to  the  presentation  of  some  con- 
siderations which  appear  to  me  to  be  dis- 
tinctly opposed  to  the  proposition  to  make 
three  years  the  normal  period  of  residence 
for  the  college  course  instead  of  four. 

Some  students  are,  unquestionably,  able 
to  complete  the  course  in  three  years. 
About  the  same  number  should  perhaps,  to 
do  the  work  equally  well,  take  five  years. 
The  question  before  us,  however,  is  not  one 
that  relates  to  a  small  proportion  of  the 
students  who  enter  college — the  very  bright- 
est or  the  very  dullest.  It  is  a  question 
which  has  to  do  with  the  normal  college 
course — that  is,  the  course  of  study  intended 
for  the  average  student. 

It  is  easy  to  point  out  the  origin  of  the 

1  Read  before  the  National  Educational  Association  (Depart- 
ment of  Higher  Education)  at  Boston,  July  7,  1903. 

79 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

difficulty  which  confronts  us  and  has  given 
rise  to  the  proposition  itself.  It  is  a  sur- 
vival of  the  old  idea  which  made  the  college 
curriculum  something  rigid,  something  into 
conformity  with  which  every  student  must 
be  brought,  rather  than  something  which 
should  be  made  to  conform  to  each  indi- 
vidual student.  It  is  not  inconsistent  with 
this  suggestion  that  the  first  discussion  of 
the  question  took  place  in  an  atmosphere 
friendly  to  the  elective  policy  in  distinction 
from  the  policy  of  a  fixed  curriculum. 
Adaptation  to  the  needs  of  the  individual 
along  certain  lines  did  not  in  this  case  carry 
with  it  flexibility  and  adaptation  in  other 
lines.  It  is  not  an  adaptation  of  the  college 
course  to  the  needs  of  individual  men  to 
propose  that  the  course  shall  be  a  three-year 
one.  An  adaptation  would  permit  four 
years  for  those  who  need  four  years,  five 
years  for  those  who  need  five  years,  and 
three  years  for  those  who  are  able  to  do  the 
work  in  three  years. 

1.  The  proposition  for  a  three-year  course 
is  based  upon  the  supposition  that  the  en- 
tire work  of  the  college  course   is   really 
university  work.     This  is  a  mistaken  sup- 
80 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

position.  The  work  of  the  freshman  and 
sophomore  years  is  ordinarily  of  the  same 
scope  and  character  as  that  of  the  preceding 
years  in  the  academy  or  high  school.  To 
cut  off  a  full  year  means  either  the  crowd- 
ing of  this  higher  preparatory  or  college 
work  of  the  freshman  and  sophomore  years, 
or  the  shortening  of  the  real  university  work 
done  in  the  junior  and  senior  years  of  the 
college  course.  The  adoption  of  either  of 
these  alternatives  will  occasion  a  serious  loss 
to  the  student.  The  average  man  is  not 
prepared  to  take  up  university  work  until 
he  has  reached  the  end  of  the  sophomore 
year.  No  greater  mistake  is  being  made  in 
the  field  of  higher  education  than  the  con- 
fusion which  is  coming  to  exist  between 
college  and  university  methods  of  work. 
The  adoption  of  a  three-year  college  term 
will  only  add  to  a  confusion  already  great. 
2.  The  suggestion  rests  upon  an  incorrect 
idea  as  to  the  age  of  students  beginning 
work.  The  average  age  of  students  enter- 
ing college  to-day  is  about  the  same  as  it 
was  twenty-five  and  fifty  years  ago.  The 
average  age  of  students  leaving  college  to- 
day is  about  the  same  as  it  was  twenty-five 
81 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

or  fifty  years  ago.  The  serious  difficulty 
lies  in  the  fact  that  the  demands  of  pro- 
fessional education  are  greater  to-day  than 
they  were  twenty-five  or  fifty  years  ago, 
and  that,  instead  of  courses  of  professional 
study  extending  over  two  years,  we  are  con- 
fronted with  courses  of  professional  study 
extending  over  three  or  four  years.  It  is  a 
point  of  special  interest,  however,  that,  al- 
though the  requirements  for  entrance  to 
college  are  so  much  greater  than  they  were 
in  former  years,  the  student  masters  these 
requirements  and  enters  at  practically  the 
same  age.  In  other  words,  better  educa- 
tional facilities  have  made  it  possible  to 
graduate  the  young  man  at  the  same  age, 
but  with  nearly  two  years  of  additional 
work.  With  all  this  gain  it  is  apparent  to 
any  student  of  the  situation  that  even  yet 
there  is  great  waste,  and  that  a  better  ar- 
rangement of  the  curriculum  in  the  earlier 
stages  of  educational  work  will  make  it 
possible  for  one  or  two  additional  years  to 
be  gained.  With  the  multiplication  of  high 
schools  and  their  greater  efficiency,  and  with 
the  consequent  improvement  in  the  gram- 
mar schools,  much  may  be  expected.  It  is 

82 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

reasonable  to  suppose  that  a  practical  limit 
has  been  reached  so  far  as  concerns  the  re- 
quirements for  admission  to  college.  With 
this  limit  fixed,  it  is  not  unreasonable  to 
expect  that  on  the  basis  of  the  present  re- 
quirements a  boy  may  reach  college  one  or 
two  years  earlier  within  the  next  decade. 
This  will  counterbalance  the  increase  of  time 
required  in  the  professional  schools  referred 
to  above.  It  is  therefore  unnecessary  to 
shorten  the  college  course  merely  to  provide 
for  an  extension  of  the  professional  course. 
3.  The  proposition  is  based  upon  a  wrong 
idea  of  the  high  school.  This  institution  is  \ 
no  longer  a  school  preparatory  for  college. 
In  its  most  fully  developed  form  it  covers 
at  least  one-half  the  ground  of  the  college 
of  fifty  years  ago.  It  is  a  real  college;  at 
all  events,  it  provides  the  earlier  part  of  a 
college  course.  Its  work  may  not  be  sepa- 
rated from  that  of  the  freshman  and  sopho- 
more years  either  in  method  or  scope.  Many 
high  schools  are  actually  moving  forward 
to  include  in  their  curriculum  the  work  of 
the  freshman  and  sophomore  years.  In 
these  schools  the  entire  college  course,  as  it 
was  known  fifty  years  ago,  besides  the  addi- 
83 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

tional  work  in  science  which  at  that  time 
was  unknown,  is  included.  This  develop- 
ment of  the  high  school  has  a  significant 
bearing  upon  the  question  before  us.  How 
is  this  new  college,  the  product  of  our  own 
generation,  to  be  brought  into  relationship 
with  the  old  college  which  has  come  down 
to  us  from  our  ancestors?  The  correct  ap- 
preciation of  the  modern  high  school  and  its 
proper  adjustment  to  the  situation  as  a 
whole  makes  strongly  against  the  proposed 
three-year  course. 

4.  The  adoption  of  the  three-year  policy 
by  the  larger  institutions  would  be  followed 
immediately  by  an  increase  of  requirements 
for  admission  to  the  first  year  of  college 
work.  This  fact  is  seen  in  the  history  of 
the  college  of  the  Johns  Hopkins  Univer- 
sity. While  high  schools  as  such  show  a 
tendency  to  increase  the  scope  of  their  work, 
and  while  this  tendency  is  certainly  to  be  en- 
couraged, such  increase  should  be  accepted 
as  a  substitute  for  the  work  of  the  college, 
but  not  as  an  additional  requirement  for 
admission  to  the  college.  Our  present  dif- 
ficulties have  their  origin  partly  in  the  fact 
that  from  time  to  time  we  have  increased 
84 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

the  requirements  for  admission  to  college, 
until,  as  has  already  been  pointed  out,  a 
fairly  good  college  course  of  instruction  is 
now  obtained  before  the  so-called  college 
work  begins.  This  is  an  evil  which  should 
be  corrected,  and  its  correction  lies  in  the 
direction  of  reducing  the  requirements  for 
admission  rather  than  in  increasing  them. 
The  evil  would  be  intensified  by  the  adop- 
tion of  the  three-year  policy. 

5.  The  proposition  is  based  upon  the 
supposition  that  the  time  requirement  is  the 
essential  thing.  Starting  from  the  tradition 
that  the  college  course  must  be  four  years 
for  all  men  of  whatever  grade,  it  proceeds 
upon  the  assumption  that,  for  various  rea- 
sons, this  period,  now  the  same  for  all  stu- 
dents, must  continue  to  be  the  same  for  all 
students,  namely,  the  three-year  period.  No 
idea  has  exerted  a  more  injurious  influence 
in  the  history  of  the  college  work  than  that 
the  period  of  four  years,  however  employed, 
if  spent  in  college  residence,  guaranteed 
a  college  education.  It  i-s  questionable 
whether  the  time  limit  in  the  undergraduate 
course  is  any  more  important  a  factor  than 
the  time  limit  in  the  work  for  the  doctor's 
85 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

degree.  This  fondness  for  a  time  limit, 
which  is  the  fundamental  basis  of  the  three- 
year  proposition,  is  a  survival  of  the  old 
class  system  which  disappeared  long  ago  in 
the  larger  institutions,  and  is  beginning  to 
show  decadence  even  in  the  smaller  insti- 
tutions. 

6.  The  proposition  is  likewise  to  be  op- 
posed because  of  its  deleterious  influence 
upon  the  smaller  colleges.  The  American 
college  is  the  glory  of  American  spiritual 
life,  and  its  existence  must  not  be  endan- 
gered. Granting  that  the  larger  institu- 
tions could  adopt  without  injury  the  three- 
year  plan,  it  would  be  impossible  for  the 
smaller  colleges  so  to  do.  Two  things  would 
follow:  (a)  the  decadence  of  the  better  col- 
leges of  this  class,  and  (b)  the  adoption  of 
the  policy  by  colleges  only  slightly  above 
the  grade  of  high  schools.  When  it  comes 
to  be  seen  that  the  college  system  is  adjusted 
in  its  entirety  with  a  view  to  its  relationship 
to  the  professional  schools,  and  that  it  is 
only  a  second  college  course  following  a 
first  college  course  already  received  in  the 
high  school,  the  tendency  will  be  to  go  di- 
rectly from  the  high  school  to  the  university 

86 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

— a  tendency  to  be  discouraged  as  urgently 
as  possible.  Moreover,  the  colleges  of  lower 
grade  will  at  once  reduce  their  period  to  one 
of  three  years,  even  though  their  curriculum 
be  greatly  inferior  to  that  of  the  larger  in- 
stitutions. In  other  words,  the  step  pro- 
posed, in  spite  of  protestations  to  the  con- 
trary, means,  in  the  end,  a  lowering  of 
requirements  throughout  the  field  of  higher 
education. 

7.  Less  than  four  years  for  a  boy  who 
enters  college  at  the  right  age,  sixteen  or 
seventeen,  is  too  short  a  time.  The  adop- 
tion, however,  of  the  three-year  course  will 
compel  every  boy  to  limit  his  college  course 
to  three  years.  This  is  a  serious  difficulty. 
On  the  present  basis  he  may  take  one,  two, 
three,  or  four  years,  according  to  circum- 
stances. On  the  new  plan  he  would  be  lim- 
ited to  three  years,  so  far  as  college  work  is 
concerned.  With  the  immense  increase  in 
attendance  at  college  which  has  come  within 
the  last  decade  on  the  four-year  basis,  why 
should  we  deliberately  plan  to  reduce  the 
time  to  three  years?  Surely  a  preparation 
will  be  needed  in  the  years  to,  come  as  full 
and  long  as  in  the  years  that  are  past. 
87 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

The  one  place  in  which  it  is  unnecessary  and 
undesirable  to  cut  down  the  time  of  those 
who  are  willing  and  able  to  take  four  years 
is  in  the  college  period.  Let  the  time  be 
shortened  in  the  earlier  years,  but  at  this 
stage  of  preparation,  with  the  great  num- 
ber of  subjects  which  may  profitably  be  con- 
sidered, let  us  have  all  the  time  possible. 

8.  The  suggestion  of  the  third-year 
course  ignores  the  culture  value  of  the  sub- 
jects in  the  first  year  of  professional  work. 
For  my  own  part  I  can  not  conceive  any 
work  more  valuable  to  a  young  man  or 
woman,  from  the  point  of  view  of  citizen- 
ship and  general  culture,'  than  the  first  year's 
work  in  the  curriculum  of  the  law  school, 
the  medical  school,  the  divinity  school,  or 
the  school  of  education.  In  any  one  of  these 
groups  the  student  is  brought  into  contact 
with  living  questions.  The  fact  that  the 
method  of  professional  schools  is  different 
is,  in  the  majority  of  cases,  a  distinct  advan- 
tage, and  in  no  case  an  injury,  since  it  serves 
as  a  corrective  of  a  tendency  toward  dilet- 
tanteism  unquestionably  encouraged  by  the 
more  lax  methods  of  the  later  years  of  col- 
lege work.  If  any  one  question  has  been 

88 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

settled  in  the  educational  discussion  of  the 
last  quarter  of  a  century,  it  is  that  a  line  is 
no  longer  to  be  drawn  between  this  class  of 
subjects  and  that,  on  the  ground  that  one 
group,  and  not  the  other,  may  be  regarded 
as  culture-producing.  The  opportunity  to 
elect  subjects  of  this  character  in  the  last 
year  of  the  college  course  does  not  injure 
the  integrity  of  the  college.  It  must  be 
confessed  that  the  adoption  of  this  policy 
by  larger  institutions  introduces  a  difficulty 
for  the  smaller  institutions,  but  this  diffi- 
culty is  not  insuperable,  and  several  ways 
have  been  already  suggested  for  meeting  it. 
9.  The  proposition,  as  already  hinted, 
subordinates  the  college  almost  wholly  to 
the  professional  school.  It  is  largely  be- 
cause of  the  increased  demands  of  the  pro- 
fessional schools  that  it  seems  necessary  to 
shorten  the  college  course.  This  does  not 
seem  to  be  in  harmony  with  the  fact  that  a 
comparatively  small  number  of  students 
really  expect  to  enter  professional  schools. 
Why  should  students  who  do  not  have  the 
professional  school  in  mind  be  required  to 
shorten  the  term  of  college  residence?  If 
it  is  answered  that  the  student  who  enters 
?  89 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

any  line  of  business  activity  needs  the  year 
thus  saved  in  order  that  he  may  begin  his 
work  earlier,  it  may  be  said  that  the  facts 
do  not  bear  out  this  proposition ;  and,  in  any 
case,  a  year  of  business  is  not  to  be  treated 
as  a  year  of  college  work  in  the  sense  that  it 
is  equivalent  to  the  first  year's  course  of 
study  in  a  professional  school.  It  is  there- 
fore as  inexpedient  to  adjust  the  whole  col- 
lege policy  to  the  supposed  needs  of  a 
minority  who  are  planning  to  enter  the  pro- 
fessional school  as  it  is  to  adjust  the  whole 
policy  of  a  high  school  to  the  needs  of  a 
minority  who  enter  college. 

10.  In  conclusion  it  is  to  be  urged  in  op- 
position to  the  proposed  movement  that  it 
is  in  general  contrary  to  the  drift  of  educa- 
tional movements,  and  that  the  very  thing 
which  it  proposes  can  easily  be  secured  by 
other  means.  Among  other  educational 
tendencies  to-day  may  be  cited  (a)  that  of 
the  high  school  to  enlarge  its  scope  and  add 
to  its  curriculum  one  or  two  years  of  addi- 
tional work;  (b)  that  of  strengthening  of 
the  faculties  and  curriculum  of  the  average 
smaller  college;  (c)  that  of  avoiding  the 
waste  in  the  earlier  years,  and  the  conse- 
90 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

quent  possibility  of  college  entrance  at  an 
earlier  age;  (d)  that  of  distinct  separation 
between  college  and  university  methods. 
To  each  and  all  of  these  the  proposition 
stands  opposed. 

Following  the  example  of  one  of  the 
speakers  this  morning,  I  would  suggest  that 
the  plan  which  has  been  in  operation  at  the 
University  of  Chicago  for  nearly  ten  years 
has  seemed  to  many  of  us  to  meet  in  large 
measure  the  demands  called  for  this  morn- 
ing. This  plan  provides  a  course  of  four 
years  and  a  course  of  two  years.  It  permits 
students  of  exceptional  ability  to  do  the 
work  in  three  years.  It  makes  it  possible 
for  those  who  so  desire  to  prolong  the  work 
to  five  years.  It  is  adapted  to  the  needs  of 
individual  or  different  classes.  With  the 
completion  of  the  two-year  course  a  certifi- 
cate is  given,  granting  the  title  of  Associate 
in  the  University.  This,  for  the  present,  is 
sufficient  in  the  way  of  a  degree.  To  stu- 
dents who  maintain  a  standing  of  the  high- 
est grade  certain  concessions  are  made. 

The  details  of  the  plan  have  been  worked 
out  as  experience  has  indicated  the  need. 
The  provision  of  a  two-year  course  meets 
91 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

the  need  of  many  who  can  not  take  a  longer 
term  of  residence,  and  likewise  of  many  who 
ought  not  to  take  a  longer  course.  The  pro- 
vision of  a  normal  four-year  course  meets 
the  need  of  the  average  man  or  woman. 
This  plan  does  not  imply  that  this  average 
man  or  woman  who  spends  four  years  in 
residence  is  particularly  stupid,  or  that  a 
year  has  been  wasted. 

It  is  believed,  from  an  experience  of  ten 
or  more,  years,  that  it  contains  the  solution 
of  at  least  many  of  the  points  now  under 
discussion. 


92 


THE   LENGTH   OF   THE 
COLLEGE    COURSE 

BY 

NICHOLAS   MURRAY   BUTLER 

PRESIDENT  OF   COLUMBIA   UNIVERSITY 


THE  LENGTH  OF  THE 
COLLEGE  COURSE1 

IN  my  judgment  most  participants  in 
the  discussion  now  going  on  throughout  the 
land  as  to  the  length  of  the  baccalaureate 
course  and  the  preparation  for  the  pro- 
fessional schools  err  in  supposing  that  the 
two  questions  are  necessarily  reducible  to 
one,  and  also  in  taking  hold  of  that  one  by 
the  wrong  end.  The  nature,  content,  and 
proper  length  of  the  baccalaureate  course 
are  matters  quite  independent  of  the  proper 
standards  of  professional  education  and  are 
entitled  to  consideration  on  their  own  merits. 

The  one  question  to  which  the  two  are 
usually  reduced  is  taken  hold  by  the  wrong 
end  when  it  is  said  that  the  baccalaureate 
course  should  be  of  a  stated  length,  say  four 
years  or  three  years,  and  that  everything 

1  Read  before  the  Department  of  Higher  Education  of  the 
National  Educational  Association,  at  Boston,  on  Tuesday, 
July  7,  1903. 

95 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

else  in  education  and  in  life  must  adapt 
itself  accordingly.  Those  who  take  this 
stand  give  us  no  clear  notion  of  (1)  where 
the  baccalaureate  course  begins,  (2)  what  it 
consists  of,  or  (3)  what  it  exists  for.  They 
assume  that  all  of  these  points  are  clearly 
understood  and  generally  agreed  upon. 
Nothing  could  be  farther  from  the  truth. 
Not  even  the  so-called  reputable  colleges 
are  in  anything  approaching  agreement  as 
to  the  standard  to  be  enforced  for  admission 
to  the  baccalaureate  course;  and  while  there 
is  an  external  pretense  of  unanimity  as  to 
what  the  baccalaureate  course  exists  for, 
that  course  is,  nevertheless,  in  too  many  in- 
stances, fearfully  and  wonderfully  made. 
Dr.  Wayland  said,  over  sixty  years  ago, 
that  "  there  is  nothing  magical  or  impera- 
tive in  the  term  of  four  years,  nor  has  it 
any  natural  relation  to  a  course  of  study. 
It  was  adopted  as  a  matter  of  accident,  and 
can  have,  by  itself,  no  important  bearing 
on  the  subject  in  hand."  To  suppose  that 
a  four-year  baccalaureate  course  is  neces- 
sary semper,  ubique,  ab  omnibus,  is  to  ele- 
vate an  accident  to  the  plane  of  a  principle. 
Others  take  hold  of  the  question  by  the 

V  r\f* 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

middle.  They  fix  an  arbitrary  age  at  which 
professionally  trained  men  should  be  ready 
for  active  work  in  life,  and  after  subtract- 
ing the  sum  of  the  years  that  they  propose 
to  allot  to  the  elementary  school,  the  sec- 
ondary school,  and  the  professional  school, 
the  remaining  years,  three,  or  perhaps  two, 
are  held  to  be  sufficient  for  the  college. 

Both  of  these  methods  appear  to  me  to 
be  arbitrary  and  unscientific,  although  the 
former  is  the  usual  academic  mode  of  set- 
tling the  question  and  has  behind  it  the 
support  of  uncritical  public  opinion. 

One  of  the  worst  of  all  educational  evil* 
is  that  of  quantitative  standards,  and  it  per- 
sists surprisingly  in  the  discussion  of  college 
and  university  problems.  Every  higher 
course  of  study  that  I  know  of,  except  only 
that  of  graduate  work  leading  to  the  degree 
of  doctor  of  philosophy  at  the  best  uni- 
versities, is  primarily  quantitative.  These 
courses  are  all  based  on  time  spent,  not  upon 
performance.  The  adjustment  of  the  pe- 
riod of  work  to  the  capacity  of  individual 
students,  now  so  common  in  elementary 
schools  and  not  unusual  in  secondary 
schools,  is  almost  wholly  absent  from  the 
97  * 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

colleges.  The  "  lock-step  "  is  seen  there  to 
perfection,  and  class  after  class  of  one  hun- 
dred or  even  two  hundred  members  moves 
forward  (with  the  exception  of  a  few  de- 
linquents) as  if  all  its  members  were  cast 
in  a  common  mold.  The  place  of  the  bacca- 
laureate course  and  its  standards  will  never 
be  established  on  sound  principles  until  the 
question  of  its  length  is  made  subordinate 
to  those  relating  to  its  content  and  its  pur- 
pose. Moreover,  it  is  quite  unreasonable  to 
assume  that  the  baccalaureate  course  should 
be  of  one  and  the  same  length  for  every- 
body. By  the  term  "  baccalaureate  course  " 
I  mean  those  liberal  studies  in  the  arts  and 
sciences  that  naturally  and  historically  fol- 
low the  secondary  school  period. 

My  own  views  on  the  questions  at  issue 
are,  briefly,  these: 

1.  The  baccalaureate  or  college  course  of 
study  of  the  liberal  arts  and  sciences  should 
be  preserved  at  all  hazards  as  an  essential 
part  of  our  educational  organization.  It  is 
distinctively  American  and  a  very  powerful 
factor  in  the  upbuilding  of  the  nation's  cul- 
ture and  idealism.  It  should  be  treated  as 
a  thing  of  value  in  and  for  itself,  and  not 
98 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

merely  as  an  incident  to  graduate  study  or 
to  professional  schools. 

2.  The  college  course  is  in  serious  danger 
by  reason  of  the  fact  that  the  secondary 
school  is  reaching  up  into  its  domain  on  the 
one   hand   and   the   professional   school   is 
reaching  down  into  it  on  the  other.    Purely 
professional  subjects  in  law,  medicine,  en- 
gineering, and  architecture  are  widely  ac- 
cepted as  part  of  the  baccalaureate  or  col- 
lege course  by  university  colleges,  and  now 
independent  colleges  in  different  parts  of 
the  country  are  trying  various  devices  with 
a  view  to  doing  the  same  thing.     If  this 
tendency  continues  unchecked,  at  many  in- 
stitutions there  will  soon  be  little  left  of  the 
old  baccalaureate  course  but  the  name. 

3.  To  preserve  the  college  is   (a)   to  fix 
and  enforce  a  standard  of  admission  which 
can  be  met  normally  by  a  combined  ele- 
mentary and  secondary  school  course  of  not 
more  than  ten  years  well-spent,  and  (b)  to 
keep  out  of  the  baccalaureate  course  purely 
professional   subjects   pursued   for   profes- 
sional ends  by  professional  methods.     The 
college  course,  in  other  words,   should  be 
constructed  for  itself  alone  and  for  the  in- 

99 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

tellectual,  moral,  and  spiritual  needs  of  the 
youth  of  our  time,  without  reference  or 
regard  to  specific  careers.  This  course  must 
be  widely  elective,  and  so  offer  material  to 
enrich  and  develop  minds  of  every  type. 
This  course  is  the  best  preparation  for  the 
professional  study  of  law,  medicine,  divin- 
ity, engineering,  architecture,  and  teaching, 
simply  because  it  does  what  it  does  for  the 
human  mind  and  the  human  character,  and 
not  because  it  is  so  hammered  and  beaten 
as  to  serve  as  a  conduit  to  a  particular 
career  or  careers. 

4.  This  course   should  be  entered  upon 
at  seventeen,  or  in  some  cases  at  sixteen. 
Eighteen  is  too  late  for  the  normal  boy;  the 
boy  who  has  had  every  educational  advan- 
tage and  is  not  ready  to  meet  any  existing 
college  entrance  test  before  he  is  eighteen 
has  been  dawdling  and  weakening  his  men- 
tal powers  by  keeping  them  too  long  in 
contact  with  merely  elementary  studies. 

5.  For   the   boy   who   enters    college    at 
seventeen  and  who  looks  forward  to  a  ca- 
reer as  scholar,  as  teacher,  or  as  man  of 
affairs,  four  years  is,  ordinarily,  not  too  long 
a  time  to  spend  in  liberal  studies.     On  the 

100 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

other  hand,  the  boy  who,  entering  college  at 
seventeen,  proposes  to  take  up  later  the 
study  of  a  profession  in  a  university,  ought 
not  to  be  compelled  to  spend  four  years 
upon  liberal  studies  just  at  that  time  in  his 
life.  To  compel  him  to  do  so  is  to  advance 
the  standard  of  professional  education  ar- 
bitrarily without  in  any  way  raising  it.  It 
is  a  fallacy  to  suppose  that  the  more  time 
a  boy  spends  in  study  the  more  he  knows 
and  the  more  he  grows.  Whether  he  grows 
by  study  depends  entirely  upon  whether  he 
is  studying  subjects  adapted  to  his  needs,  his 
interests,  and  his  powers.  Pedagogues  sup- 
pose that  the  more  time  a  boy  spends  in 
school  and  college  the  better;  educators 
know  the  contrary.  There  is  a  time  to  leave 
off  as  well  as  a  time  to  begin.  A  boy  can 
develop  intellectual  apathy  in  college  as 
well  as  knowledge,  weakness  of  will  as  well 
as  strength  of  character. 

6.  The  earlier  parts  of  professional 
courses  in  law,  medicine,  engineering  and 
the  like  are  most  excellent  material  for  the 
boy  of  nineteen  or  twenty.  He  should  be- 
gin them  at  that  time  and  complete  his  four 
years  of  professional  study  by  twenty-three 
101 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

or  twenty-four.  To  postpone  his  profes- 
sional course  later  than  this  is  not  only  to 
waste  his  time,  but  to  waste  his  mind,  which 
is  far  worse. 

7.  There  should  be  a  college  course  two 
years  in  length,  carefully  constructed  as  a 
thing  by  itself  and  not  merely  the  first  part 
of  a  three-year  or  a  four-year  course,  which 
will  enable  intending  professional  students 
to  spend  this  time  as  advantageously  as  pos- 
sible in  purely  liberal  studies./    The  uni- 
versity colleges  can  establish  such  a  course 
readily   enough;   the   independent   colleges 
will  have  to  establish  such  a  course  or  see 
their  influence  and  prestige  steadily  decline. 
To  try  to  meet  the  new  situation  by  simply 
reproducing    all    present    conditions    on    a 
three-year  scale  instead  of  on  a  four-year 
scale  is  a  case  of  solvitur  ambulando.     The 
shortening  of  the  college  to  three  years  for 
all  students  involves  an  unnecessary  sacri- 
fice.    As  usually  defended  this  policy  in- 
volves no  educational  principle,  but  merely 
concedes  a  year  of  liberal  study  to  the  mod- 
ern demand  for  haste  and  hurry. 

8.  Whether  the  completion  of  such  a  two- 
year  course  should  be  crowned  with  a  de- 

102 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

gree  is  to  me  a  matter  of  indifference. 
Degrees  are  the  tinsel  of  higher  education 
and  not  its  reality.  Such  a  two-year  course 
as  I  have  in  mind  would  imply  a  standard 
of  attainment  at  least  as  high  as  that  re- 
quired for  the  degree  of  A.  B.  in  1860, 
which  had  many  characteristics  that  we  of 
to-day  persistently  undervalue.  If  this  dis- 
cussion could  be  diverted  from  degrees  to 
real  educational  standards  it  would  be  a 
great  gain.  The  compromise  plan  as  to 
degrees,  now  becoming  so  popular,  whereby 
the  baccalaureate  degree  is  given  either  for 
two  years  of  college  study  and  two  years 
of  work  in  a  professional  school  or  for  three 
years  of  college  study  and  one  year  of  work 
in  a  professional  school,  is  disastrous  to  the 
integrity  of  the  college  course.  It  delib- 
erately shortens  the  college  course  by  one 
year  or  two  while  proclaiming  a  four-year 
college  course.  It  is  a  policy  that  only  uni- 
versity colleges  can  adopt;  independent  col- 
leges must  suffer  if  it  becomes  a  fixed  and 
permanent  policy. 

9.  The  most  difficult  point  to  establish, 
apparently,  is  that  at  which  the  baccalaure- 
ate   course    should    begin.      Colleges    with 
103 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

courses  nominally  four  years  in  length  are 
admitting  students  with  from  one  to  two 
years'  less  preparation  than  is  demanded  by 
other  colleges  with  four-year  courses.  The 
lax  enforcement  of  published  requirements 
for  admission,  together  with  the  wide  ac- 
ceptance of  certificates  from  uninspected 
and  unvisited  schools,  has  demoralized  col- 
lege standards  very  generally.  It  does  not 
make  much  difference  how  long  the  bacca- 
laureate course  is  if  it  does  not  begin  any- 
where. 

10.  A  university  ought  not  to  admit  to 
its  professional  schools  students  who  have 
not  had  a  college  course  of  liberal  study,  or 
its  equivalent.     A  minimum  course  of  two 
years  of  such  study  should  be  insisted  upon. 
A  four-year  course  should  not  be  required 
for  the  two  reasons   (1)   that  it  delays  too 
long   entrance   upon   active   life-work   and 
(2)  that  it  does  not  use  the  time  and  effort 
of  the  intending  professional  student  to  the 
best  advantage. 

11.  For  a  university  to  admit  professional 
students  direct  from  the  secondary  schools 
is    to   throw   the    weight    of   its    influence 
against  the  spirit  and  ideals  of  college  train- 

104 


PRESENT  COLLEGE  QUESTIONS 

ing,  and  to  prepare  for  the  so-called  learned 
professions  a  large  body  of  very  imperfectly 
educated  men.  To  say  that  any  other  pro- 
cedure is  undemocratic  is  not  only  a  grave 
misuse  of  words,  but  is  to  imply  that  the 
universities  should  not  struggle  to  give  this 
democracy  what  it  most  needs,  namely,  well- 
educated  and  highly  trained  professional 


servce. 


(i) 


105 


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